Texas Tech football: Turning points in Red Raiders win over West Virginia
Tech comes up with another 4th down stop to open the second half
Coaches love to tout the importance of the first drive of the second half. That’s when the halftime adjustments and the rousing locker room speech he delivers is supposed to spark a turnaround. And given that his team was down 25 points at the break, we can imagine that Brown had some choice words for his team.
In the second half, WVU took the opening kicking off and got all the way to the Red Raider 11-yard-line. On the drive’s 14th and final play, Kendall tried to loft a ball to the back of the endzone but there were two Mountaineers and three Red Raiders all at the same place and Kendall’s high floating pass was incomplete.
At this point, any air that the stadium might have had left in it was lost. The home team had done everything that it had wanted to on the first drive out of the break but to no avail.
WVU put together its best-looking drive of the day but still, couldn’t put seven points on the board. The key play on this drive was a 30-yard pass from Kendall to George Campbell on the seventh play.
The connection took WVU from its own 37 to the Tech 33 but it should have gone for a score. Campbell, like so many receivers this year, had simply run right past the Tech secondary and had 5 yards on every defender. But Kendall’s pass was a bit of a duck and forced his receiver to wait on the ball, giving Tech enough time to recover.
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This was a missed opportunity for the home team and a massive break for Tech. Though Campbell should never have been that wide open, at least he didn’t burn Tech for yet another 50-plus-yard-TD the way too many opponents have this year. And seven plays later when his team couldn’t get into the endzone, this game was essentially over.