Texas Tech football: Statistical goals vs. Kansas State

If the Texas Tech football team can reach these statistical goals, Saturday’s game could go the way we all hope it will.

Saturday’s meeting between the Kansas State Wildcats and our Red Raiders is going to be rather fascinating from not just an X’s and O’s perspective.  That’s because the psychological component of the game will likely play a massive role in how this game unfolds.

When one considers just how opposite last weekend was for these two programs, it’s easy to understand how the emotional component of football will come into play.  What we don’t know is which team will have the advantage.

For the Red Raiders, there’s a question as to how last Saturday’s gut-wrenching loss to Texas will impact this week’s performance.  Will it prove to motivate them to play with a chip on their shoulder in order to prevent more disappointment and heartbreak?  Or will there be a hangover that could impact the team’s effort and motivation in the year’s first road game?

History suggests the latter is more likely.  Last year, Tech was in a similar situation when Iowa State came to Lubbock one week after the Red Raiders were jobbed by the Big 12 officials in Waco.  That afternoon, when we all expected Matt Wells‘ team to come out and play with as much anger and fire as one could imagine, the Red Raiders slept walked through the first half of the game with the Cyclones as they went down 20-0 by the middle of the second quarter on their way to a 34-24 defeat.

The year prior, the Red Raiders faced Kansas State after consecutive one-score losses to OU and Texas.  But instead of coming out and playing their best football, Tech managed just 181 total yards in a 21-6 loss to a KSU team that entered the game just 4-6 on the year.

But while Tech is being forced to come back from a crushing defeat this weekend, Kansas State has the opposite challenge.  Coming off of an upset of No. 3 Oklahoma, the Wildcats now must try to avoid a letdown.

Conventional wisdom suggests that it is tougher to sustain your level of motivation a week after such a massive upset.  That could be especially true for Kansas State as they have to look at Texas Tech as a far less intriguing opponent than the Sooners were.

Back in 2011, Red Raider fans were reminded of just how tough it can be to play well a week after pulling off a massive upset of OU.  After stunning the No. 1 Sooners in Norman, the Red Raiders came back to Lubbock to face a 3-4 Iowa State team.  Falling behind 21-0, Tech would eventually lose 41-7 in one of the most inexplicable losses in the last 20 years of the program’s history.

With so much riding on the emotional side of this contest, Saturday feels like a referendum on each coaching staff’s ability to motivate their team on the heels of a monumental game.  But while that is hard to quantify, statistics are not.  So let’s look at some statistical goals that Tech should be able to reach provided that they play with the type of intensity and passion that we hope they will.