Texas Tech football: Handing out game balls for Saturday’s win over WVU

PK Jonathan Garibay

Coming into the season, one of the biggest questions the Texas Tech football team had to answer was at the placekicker position.  After all, last year was a struggle, to say the least, as Tech hit only 56% of their field goal attempts.

But this year, Jonathan Garibay has taken command of that role and been one of the season’s biggest and most pleasant surprises.  And on Saturday, the senior was a perfect 3-3 on his field-goal attempts, including the game-winner with 18 seconds remaining.

It was the second time in his Red Raider career that Garibay has hit a last-minute game-winner.  Last fall, he drilled a field goal as time expired to lift the Red Raiders over Baylor.

But while his final kick was the most important kick he made on Saturday, the most impressive kick he made came at the end of the first half.  With Tech leading 14-0 but having no timeouts, the field goal unit had to scramble to get onto the field and get a kick away while the clock was winding down.

In what was somewhat of a surprise given how much Tech’s special teams have struggled this year, the operation was perfect and Garibay nailed the 33-yard kick to put his team up 17-0.  And in a game decided by just three points, every kick Garibay made would prove to be critical, especially that one.

So far this season, Garibay has been perfect on six field-goal attempts.  He’s also hit 22 of 23 extra-point tries.

We’ve seen in the past that struggles in the placekicking game can derail an entire season.  Fortunately, Tech has not had to endure that frustration this year as Garibary has locked down the kicking job.  And because he was clutch on Saturday, he deserves a game ball.