Texas Tech football: How the Red Raiders were able to beat WVU

Saturday, the Texas Tech football program picked up an important victory over West Virginia so let’s take a look at how it came to pass.

It isn’t a stretch to suggest that this weekend’s 34-27 victory over West Virginia was the best win of the Matt Wells era.  While last year’s 45-35 triumph over Oklahoma State in Lubbock is the other contender for that distinction, that game felt far more flukish given that Tech benefitted from five Cowboy turnovers as the visitors gave the game away on a silver platter.

But there was little charity on the part of the Mountaineers Saturday night.  Even on the game-deciding fumble, Tech had to earn the seven points they got from Zech McPhearson‘s scoop-and-score by stripped the ball from Sam James.

What makes this win the most impressive of the Wells era is the fact that Tech finally found a way to overcome adversity over the course of an entire game to come out on top.  This was the first time that a Wells Red Raider team won a game that was tied in the fourth quarter and it was also the first time that the second-year head coach won a game for Tech when his team didn’t jump out to a huge early lead and play from ahead for four quarters.

Rather, Saturday’s win was a slugfest with the two teams trading blows all night.  The game was tied 7-7, 20-20, and 27-27 and each time, it was West Virginia that knotted the score.

But unlike in other recent close games, the Red Raiders finally found a way to answer an opponent’s challenge and come away with a win in a one-score game.  It was just the second one-score win of the Wells era and the other hardly counts in the minds of most fans given that it came against FCS opponent Houston Baptist.

"“That was a 15-round fight,” Wells said after the game.  “And you traded blows and you just kinda went back and forth and, man, we made one just play at the end.”"

So let’s go inside this victorious box score to see just how the Red Raiders managed to pull this one out.  And we will begin by looking at an area of the game that most thought would go West Virginia’s way.