Texas Tech football: Tight win over UCF sends Red Raiders bowling

Texas Tech has started to win one-score games again

In college football, only the elite teams like Georgia, Michigan, or Ohio State seem to blow out their opponents just about every week.  The rest of the teams in the nation continually find themselves in one-score games that can often come down to one random play here or there.

Tech was 4-0 in such games last year but started out 0-3 in 2023.  The OT loss at Wyoming, the heartbreaking home loss to Oregon a week later, and the 20-13 loss at West Virginia were all tough to handle and made many question if last year’s success in close games was just a fluke.

Now, though, Tech has won three one-score games in a row.  The TCU game was salvaged by a late INT by Dadrion Taylor-Demerson.  The Kansas game came down to Garcia’s field goal.  Saturday’s win was sealed by a deflected extra point.

In all three games, one bounce of the ball could have changed things but that doesn’t matter.  The reality is that Tech has rebounded from a disappointing start to the season and displayed pride in fighting back to bowl eligibility by scratching out some one-score wins.

Much of that credit goes to McGuire for being able to keep his team engaged even after all of this year’s preseason aspirations were dashed.  However, credit must also go to the players for being willing to fight for the logo on their helmets and for knowing that they are still trying to build a new foundation for the program.

This is an old team and that experience has shown up in November’s close wins.  This team is fighting like hell to make the most out of what’s left in the season and it has earned a 13th game in the process.  While just getting to six wins won’t be worthy of a parade down Broadway, it is a credit to the players on this team for staying in the fight and not cashing in the chips when the team was 3-5 overall heading into the open week at the end of October.