Texas Tech football: Finally, Red Raiders win a game that they should have lost

Houston’s penalties were massive in this game

You can tell that Houston head coach Dana Holgorsen is part of the Mike Leach coaching tree.  That’s because his teams are often undisciplined and penalty-prone.  And on Saturday, that proved to be his team’s ultimate undoing.

Penalized 11 times for a whopping 112 yards, Houston was its own worst enemy on the day.  And Tech was the beneficiary.

The most egregious mistake came in the first half when Houston’s Tank Dell had a punt return TD wiped off the board by a roughing the punter penalty in the endzone.  That one mistake could have cost Houston the game in and of itself.

In all, four of those Houston penalties came in potential change-of-possession situations, such as a third or fourth down play.  What’s more, most of Houston’s most egregious penalties were of the unnecessary variety such as unsportsmanlike conduct or personal fouls.

On the other side of the ledger, Tech was rather disciplined.  Flagged only six times for 44 yards, McGuire’s team was more composed and played a cleaner game and that proved to be a huge difference.

Perhaps Holgorsen best summed up what cost his team the game and he did so in as blunt of a manner as possible.

"“Ok, two things,” he said after the game. “One, we didn’t play well enough to win tonight – just a whole lot of stupid stuff. Stupid, stupid, stupid undisciplined stuff. I don’t feel like we deserved to win. With that said, I was very proud of our team for how we kept fighting once again. If you could ever have a repeat of a week ago, that was it. We just let it slip away again. We would’ve been lucky to get out of here with a win, if we would have won this game, we would have been lucky to get out of here with a win. Just too much stupid crap.”"

That “stupid crap” proved to be just what the Red Raiders needed to pull this game out.  And thankfully, this year’s team was good enough to take advantage of the opportunity.