The Texas Tech football team is now 1-2 after Saturday’s loss to Kansas State so let’s look at why the Red Raiders lost.
Texas Tech football fans have no patience for any more excuses when it comes to the state of the program. And Saturday’s 31-21 loss to Kansas State was a perfect example of why.
Facing a team that was no more talented on paper than they were, the Red Raiders again couldn’t make the critical plays in the fourth quarter. In fact, they were dominated down the stretch by a Wildcat team that had its own reason to make excuses.
Both teams had to play the majority of Saturday’s contest with their backup QB. Texas Tech starter Alan Bowman left the game in the middle of the first quarter with an apparent ankle injury while KSU’s Skylar Thompson exited with a shoulder injury in the second quarter.
But while losing your starting QB is never ideal, this scenario should have favored the Red Raiders. That’s because Tech’s backup is junior Henry Colombi, who entered the game 49 career pass attempts and 11 appearances under his belt (all at Utah State) while KSU’s backup is true freshman Will Howard, who had just one career pass attempt prior to his appearance against the Red Raiders.
Thus, losing Alan Bowman is no excuse for Matt Wells and his team. Rather, the battle of backups gave us an unexpected opportunity to see which of the two programs was better equipped to handle adversity and as usual, the answer was not the one we hoped for.
It was yet another opportunity for this fledgling rebuild to take a critical step forward after being stuck in neutral for the last 15 games. But instead of bowing up and making a stand, the Red Raiders simply did what they almost always do in such circumstances and tucked their tails between their legs while another Big 12 team made the plays required to claim the win.
Frustration does not begin to describe what this fan base feels after Saturday’s loss. That’s because this was not a contest against a team that was clearly better than the Red Raiders. What’s more, there were opportunities for the Red Raiders to come out on top.
But of course, that didn’t happen as this program’s long, painful decline continued at Snyder Family Stadium, where Tech hasn’t won since 2008. So we have no choice but to embrace the misery and let’s do that by looking at exactly why the Red Raiders could not beat the Wildcats.