Texas Tech football: How notable coaches fared in second season
Mike Leach improved in his second year…kind of
The year 2020 will always be remembered as the year when the coronavirus took away our spring sports. But it isn’t the first time that a global incident caused an interruption of Texas Tech sports.
In 2001, the Red Raiders’ second game of the year was canceled after the September 11th terrorist attacks meaning that Tech played one fewer game than normal. That season, the second of the Mike Leach era, Tech managed a 7-5 record, which was technically a one-game improvement over the 7-6 record Leach posted in his debut season.
The game that was canceled was a road contest with UTEP and given that games in El Paso have long been tough for Tech to navigate, it isn’t safe to simply assume that Tech would have won that contest. Thus, while Leach did technically improve in his second year, that statement has to come with an asterisk.
One of the early hallmarks of the Leach years was a struggle to beat ranked teams. That was a problem in 2000 as Tech went 0-4 in such games (though in fairness, two of those were against the No. 1 team in the nation at the time, Nebraska and OU).
In 2001, the Red Raiders continued to struggle against top-5 teams dropping three such games but they did pick up two wins over ranked foes. Beating No. 24 Kansas State on the road 38-19 and No. 24 Texas A&M in Lubbock 12-0, the Red Raiders were able to start earning the reputation as a team that ranked Big 12 programs dreaded to see on the schedule during the 2000s.
That was the second year in the “Air Raid Offense” for junior QB Kliff Kingsbury. Passing for 3,502 yards and 25 touchdowns, he took a step forward as his completion percentage jumped from 61% to 69% and his interceptions fell from 17 to just nine.
One has to hope that the same type of improvement is in store for Alan Bowman this year in his second year under offensive coordinator David Yost. Of course, the biggest difference is that Bowman played just three games in his first season under his new coaching staff while Kingsbury started all 13 games in the first year of the Leach era.
That season, the offense averaged 33.5 points per game but was wildly inconsistent. Six times, the Red Raiders put up over 35 points in a game but four times, Tech failed to top 20 points. Here’s hoping that such inconsistency does not plague the 2020 offense and a huge key will be finally having Bowman on the field for a full season.