Texas Tech football: Turning points in Red Raiders win over West Virginia

Ta’Zhawn Henry find the endzone on 4th down

One of the narratives of this year for the Red Raiders is how the team has struggled to turn takeaways into points.  But that wasn’t an issue in the first half on Saturday as two WVU turnovers led to 14 Red Raider points on the way to a 35-10 halftime score.

The first takeaway was Douglas Coleman’s NCAA-leading 8th interception of the year on West Virginia’s second drive.  Returning the ball 30 yards to the WVU 24, Coleman put his offense in prime scoring range.

But this is an offense that has also been somewhat poor inside the opponent’s 25.  All we have to do is think back to the Baylor game when six drives inside the Baylor 25 resulted in a total of just 13 points and we can remember how that flaw has cost the 2019 Red Raiders dearly.

Fortunately, the Red Raiders didn’t make that mistake Saturday.  However, the drive after Coleman’s pick almost stalled at the WVU 4-yard-line.

Facing a 4th-and-1, the Red Raiders went against convention for a spread offense and ran the ball. On the play, Henry ran through what appeared to be an uncalled facemask to find the endzone.  There was, however, a flag on WVU for being offsides so Tech would have had at least a first down regardless of what Henry was able to do.

However, this offense isn’t the type that should ever take points for granted.  We’d like to think that Tech could score against any team in the nation with four tries from the two-yard-line but we’ve all seen plenty of instances when teams make goalline stands against far better offenses than Tech’s.

Putting Tech up 21-3, this run put WVU in a huge hole and likely took any air out of the home team.  Remember that WVU came into the game averaging just over 20 points per game in Big 12 play and hadn’t topped 14 points in three weeks.  Therefore, they probably already saw the writing on the wall when they looked up and Tech had 21 points in the first quarter.

It was also interesting to see Matt Wells play so aggressively despite already holding an 11-point lead.  Conventional wisdom would suggest taking the three points in that situation, especially against an offensively challenged team.  But wells sent a message by going for the early kill-shot and it paid off in a big way.