Texas Tech football: Under the radar stats from Red Raiders’ win over TCU
To say that Texas Tech played a fantastic game on Thursday night against TCU might be a stretch. However, this is a team that isn’t in a position to turn its nose up at any type of success on the football field.
At times, the Red Raiders clearly looked like the superior team. Never trailing by more than one point in the game, twice Joey McGuire’s squad held two-score leads.
On the other hand, though, on each of those occasions, TCU was able to fight back into the game once actually taking a 21-20 lead and once having an opportunity to possess the ball in the closing minutes trailing by only seven points.
To be honest, TCU is a bad football team. Relying on a redshirt freshman QB who has accuracy issues, the Frogs have now dropped their last three road games.
What’s more, Sonny Dykes’ team has not faced a ranked opponent all season and yet, it still boasts a record of just 4-5. In other words, that was a team that Tech absolutely should have blown out of the water.
That almost happened when the Red Raiders took a 20-7 halftime lead and it almost happened again when the home team claimed a 35-21 advantage in the fourth quarter. However, mistakes on the part of the home team allowed TCU to stay within striking defense.
Most maddening were the penalties that the Red Raiders committed. Flagged eight times for 72 yards, Tech repeatedly made life more difficult than it needed to be.
Many of those flags were unnecessary. For instance, in the first half, Cam’Ron Valdez kicked a defender after the whistle to draw a flag that backed the offense up to its own 13. Fortunately, the Red Raiders would recover to score a touchdown on that possession to go up 17-7.
However, Tech was also flagged for a facemask, illegal touching, and three false starts. Those are all avoidable infractions and against a better opponent, they could have cost McGuire’s team a win.
Fortunately, this TCU team wasn’t good enough to capitalize on Tech’s mistakes. And fortunately, the Red Raiders pulled it together long enough to get a much-needed win.
Now, there is a clear (but still difficult) path to six wins and a third bowl appearance in a row. Tech now has a chance to pick up what would be the season’s best win by taking down No. 21 Kansas on the road next Saturday. That will be tough but not impossible to pull off. Then, a win over a bad UCF team in Lubbock could send the Red Raiders bowling.
Had the Tech not been able to hold on against the Frogs, though, Their only path to the postseason would have required a win at No. 7 Texas as well. That’s why beating TCU meant more than just picking up a win over a hated rival.
So now that the dust has settled and we’ve had a day to look back on the fourth Red Raider win of the year, let’s analyze some under-the-radar developments that helped carry Tech to a win. We’ll start with a successful position swap that paid dividends on defense.