Texas Tech football: Turning points in loss to Horned Frogs

Trey Wolff misses extra point

If there was one moment when Tech lost this game, it came in the second quarter when Trey Wolff missed his first extra point of the year after his team scored in the second quarter to cut the TCU lead to 24-16.  At the time that the Red Raiders scored on a 70-yard R.J. Turner reception, their redshirt freshman kicker had made all 34 of his extra-point attempts on the season.

He would miss No. 35.  More importantly, he would not kick another extra point in the game.

That’s because for the remainder of the afternoon, Matt Wells decided to chase that missed point and it proved to be a point that he would never get back.  Ultimately, that’s where this game was lost.

In the third quarter, Tech found the endzone twice and both times the Red Raiders failed to convert on the 2-point attempt that followed. In a two-point loss, the math is pretty easy to understand.

If Wolff makes his second extra point of the day, Tech would have pulled to within 27-24 after its first drive of the second half, which ended with an R.J. Turner 3-yard TD grab.

Then, Tech would have been up 31-27 after its next touchdown, a 33-yard TD catch by Erik Ezukanma in the middle of the third quarter.  Thus, when Wolff kicked his 4th-quarter 24-yard FG, Tech would have been up 34-30.

It’s impossible to assume that the game would have unfolded exactly as it did if Wolff’s extra point would have split the uprights.  But it isn’t a stretch to say that this might have been the most critical turning point in the game.

Because Tech was forced to chase that point the rest of the game, it lost.  Some argue that Wells should not have chased the point after either of his team’s 3rd-quarter touchdowns and in hindsight, that’s absolutely true.  But he never would have been in that position if his kicker would have made the easiest kick the game has to offer.