Texas Tech football: The defining victories of the 2010s

2011: Texas Tech 41, Oklahoma 38

There’s no doubt what the best win of the last decade was for this program.  On an October night when thunderstorms delayed kickoff by two hours, the Red Raiders jumped out to an early lead and held on to upset No. 3 Oklahoma in Norman 41-38.

Tech QB Seth Doege threw for 441 yards and four touchdown passes to snap the Sooner’s 39-game home winning streak.  Three of those scores went to Alex Torres who had 94 yards on only four receptions.

It was a 44-yard strike to Torres on a slip screen that got Tech off to a 7-0 lead in the first quarter.  In the second quarter, Tech tacked on 17 more points thanks to a 1-yard Doege plunge, a 30-yard TD catch by Torres, and a Donnie Corona field goal to give the underdogs a 24-7 lead at the intermission.

After the break, Torres snagged an 11-yard TD pass to stake his team to a 31-7 advantage.  But that’s when OU started to mount a comeback.

In fact, OU would score the next 17 points to make it a 7-point game early in the 4th quarter.  But a 37-yard Corona FG and a 14-yard TD pass to Tramaine Swindall would put the game out of reach.

"“It’s special for the entire team. I’m excited about it,” Doege said. “The best part of it is seeing how happy and excited my teammates are. We all got together, and we pulled it off. Everybody didn’t think we could.”"

To understand how good the Texas Tech football program had been in the 2000s, consider that this win kept alive a streak of not losing three-straight games since 1998.  Ironically, that streak would end three games later as Tech would lose the final five games of the year on the way to a 5-7 season.

It is as unfathomable now as it was then to believe that a team that would go just 5-7 on the year could go into Norman and take down the No. 1 team in the A.P. poll but that’s what we saw happen in 2011.  Unfortunately, wins of that magnitude were just shooting stars across the bleak sky that was this past decade.