Texas Tech football: The best home seasons in Red Raider history

2005

Prior to 2008, Mike Leach’s best season in Lubbock was 2005 when he took his team to a 9-3 mark and an appearance in the Cotton Bowl.   And just like in 2008, he managed to go unscathed in Lubbock.

But there should be a bit of an asterisk next to this perfect home season.  That’s because Tech began the year with three-straight home games against the weak, the lame, and the halt…otherwise known as Florida International, Sam Houston State, and Indiana State.  The average score in those three contests was 66.3-10.3.

In fact, Tech played only one ranked team at home that year and that was No. 25 Oklahoma in the regular-season finale.  Of course, that was one of the most memorable wins of the Leach era as Taurean Henderson scored on the last play of the game to secure a 23-21 win.

Also making this schedule odd is the fact that Tech didn’t play a road game until week 5, which was October 8th at Nebraska.  That too was a memorable game as it was the one that Tech won after recovering a fumble from Nebraska’s Le Kevin Smith, a 300-pound DT who tried to return an interception rather than just fall on the ball to secure the win.

With the exception of the OU game, every other home contest that year was a bloodletting.  The average score in the seven games was 52.4-15.1 in favor of the Red Raiders.

But while most of the games were laughers, two of the blowouts gave us some legendary moments.  First was the 59-20 win over Kansas State in which after Dwayne Slay nearly decapitated Wildcat QB Alan Everidge and second was a 56-17 humiliation of Texas A&M, Tech’s largest win ever in the series.  Hopefully, the 2020 home schedule gives us some similar moments to remember.