10 Things: Oklahoma State 23, Texas Tech 0

1. Game Links:

2. Not Here to Be Angry. That was not a good performance. Not by any stretch. But I’m not angry. Or really all that disappointed. Or think anything differently than when the game started. I’m still pretty well gleefully in a good place because I know that Texas Tech is going bowling. Texas Tech has a new coach. Last night wasn’t a butt-whipping in the tranditional sense. Texas is not bowl eligible.

I don’t know if it is age or me picking my moments, but I’m just not in a bad place in regards to this team and this trend for me probably won’t end until sometime next year. That’s not to say that I won’t be disappointed at times, but I’m in a pretty good spot and I would love to vent, but I’m not here with this team. They’ve exceeded my expectations by getting to a bowl. I no longer have to watch a Matt Wells team. We get to enjoy recruiting again. I feel blessed at this point. If you’ve come for the angry guy on the internet, you’ve come to the wrong place for a while.

The other comforting thought is that Texas Tech did not get absolutely blown out, like they did against Texas and TCU. The offense’s struggles aside, this was a game that was within reach on paper through the 3rd quarter and a defensive miscue, it could have been even closer going into halftime. I don’t think this was a team that was unprepared, but playing a team that was just quite a bit better on defense.

3. Oklahoma State is a Buzzsaw. I thought that Oklahoma State would be the best team that Texas Tech has played thus far this year and I thought that was absolutely the case. The Cowboys were even better on defense than I had imagined and not as good on offense as I thought they would be. Texas Tech averaged a ridiculous 1 yard per carry, 25 carries for 26 yards, and 2.6 yards per attempt. Texas Tech couldn’t run, pass, or really do much of anything. Oklahoma State has a bit of momentum and they’ve been gearing up for next Saturday’s game against Oklahoma and Texas Tech was merely in their path of destruction at this point. I know that some of Texas Tech’s offensive woes were self-inflicted, but I thought the Oklahoma State defense was nothing short of great.

4. Third Down Miscues. Two third down penalties ended up leading to Oklahoma State touchdowns and that’s sort of what happens when you leave the defense on the field for as long as that happened. I think it was Riko Jeffers and Krison Merriweather that were the culprits, but I don’t know how much that matters. For many games time of possession is a worthless statistic, but it wasn’t last night. Oklahoma State held a 37 to 23 minute advantage and Texas Tech’s 2nd quarter was the only quarter where they possessed the ball for more than 6 minutes. That’s pretty well dominating and that’s leaving the defense on the field way too long.

I think that Sonny Cumbie admitted as much after the game, but the fault of the game was not the defense necessarily.

5. Punter = Player of the Game. Austin McNamara was absolutely special last night. I’m a terrible historian of Texas Tech football, but Don Williams is not and his post-game tweets indicate that McNamara’s 8 punts for 50+ yards is the best in NCAA history. Don checked with the SID for San Diego State and all-world punter Matt Araiza for the Aztecs and this topped whatever he’s done in a game. Araiza has been the best the nation seen this year.

Austin McNamara’s punts tonight. FC=fair catch. OB=out of bounds. TB=touchback.
51 yards FC OSU 23
56 FC OSU 33
63 OB OSU 19
55 FC OSU 15
56 TB
70 TB
48 FC OSU 15/holding penalty/OSU 8
57 FC or OB (not shown in play-by-play) OSU 25
52 FC OSU 18@RayGuyAward

— Don Williams (@AJ_DonWilliams) November 21, 2021

6. Offensive Woes. I mentioned the offensive woes a bit above, but the question is if Sonny Cumbie should no longer be considered for the offensive coordinator position and I’m pretty agnostic on that. I really like Sonny Cumbie as an offensive coordinator, a coach, and a person. But I’m also not going to be calling for a particular coach to be the offensive coordinator or anything else. I’ve always tried to maintain this idea that whatever influence I might wield is best spent just following what happens and making a determination from that aspect. I think that the offense’s performance yesterday would not sway me one way or another in regards to Cumbie. He’s done so much good on offense with a third-string quarterback that I’m hesitant to let this diminish what I think of the job he’s done. Regardless, whatever McGuire decides to do, I’m fine with, and if that’s Cumbie then that’s great, but if it is someone else, then that’s okay too. Cumbie’s offensive numbers thus far didn’t take into account two of the best defenses in the Big 12 in Oklahoma State and Baylor, so it’s important to take into account the totality of the season.

7. Nit-Picks and Pick-Me-Ups. Gonna be a lot of nit-picks here.

There was a lot of miscommunication between the receivers and Smith, which is odd for that to happen this late in the year, but I’m not going to yell really here. There were a lot of missed opportunities.
Donovan Smith only passed for 83 yards on 29 attempts and was sacked 5 times and was under pressure significantly more, although Oklahoma State was only given credit for 1 quarterback hurry, which doesn’t seem possible. There was a scene where Donovan’s dad, DeAndre, was yelling at him the series before he came off the field, and my thought is that DeAndre and Sonny both felt it was time. Donovan was off and he wasn’t feeling it.
Mason Tharp led the team with 3 catches for 39 yards.
There was absolutely no room to run. The most rushing yards was 15 by Behren Morton, and then after that it was SaRodorick Thompson who had 12 yards on 5 carries. The OSU defense’s ability to close was pretty spectacular.
Colin Schooler had 13 tackles and as mentioned above, there’s only so much the defense can do. They eventually crumbled after so many plays and second chances.
I’m living in a world where Bucky Richardson, the old TAMU quarterback, has a son who is a freshman for Oklahoma State.
I thought the defense actually did a decent job of holding Jaylen Warren in check, only 12 carries for 37 yards is okay. Eventually the defense broke, there were 87 Oklahoma State plays to just 58 for Texas Tech.

8. Crowd Personal Fouls. I’m sort of over this. Last week the only call that I thought the referees got wrong was the Travis Koontz catch that was ruled a turnover. Personally I thought Koontz was down, but the other calls I sort of agreed with and thought they got right. I thought the same thing last night. I wasn’t too upset at the calls and thought they got things right for the most part.

Now that this whole “Free Harris and Jensen” movement is out there (Not blaming them, but they voiced their displeasure for the refs and they can do that and they can also face consequences as a result.) and it’s “us” against “them” I think that this gives some fans the autonomy to throw things on the field like last week. Yes, the things thrown on the field very well could have been Oklahoma State fans, but once you step into that territory of being a victim of the referees and the referee-world is against you, then maybe you just stop caring and last week’s lone water bottle, becomes a can of beer and more water bottles and other things. I’m probably in the minority on my thoughts here, but that’s fine. The refs were fine last night and the penalties called against Texas Tech were fine.

Factually, Oklahoma State had 9 penalties for 87 yards and Texas Tech had 8 for 51. This was a sloppy game overall and if you would have asked me who had more penalties, I would have definitely thought it was Texas Tech, but that’s me falling to this idea of being unnecessarily picked on. Yes, Texas Tech’s penalties were probably more impactful. I said after Jensen and Harris were suspended that if there is a code of conduct for announcers to follow and they didn’t follow it, then yes, they should have been suspended. They got their money’s worth. I’m moving on. I’d also add that I’m just not that caught up in this story as others maybe are. I dunno.

9. Coach Quotes. Opening statement from head coach Sonny Cumbie:

“Well obviously just disappointed, very disappointed in our performance on offense. Oklahoma State’s a really good football team, defensively, offensively, on special teams. Coach Gundy, we talked about it during the week, he’s done a great job with that team and that program. Our players played really hard and inspired on defense. Offensively, we could never get into a rhythm. I thought we used Austin McNamara too much but he was a game changer, he did a great job punting the football, just disappointed. In the performance, in the result, and just, we had a great crowd. They showed up, supported these seniors, these players tonight and I really just wish we would have played better and performed better on offense and then given ourselves a chance to be competitive at the end and win a football game. But one of the things I told our players is that I was extremely proud of their effort, their fight, their passion. We just didn’t make enough plays on offense.”

On playing well:

“Well, I think it’s just a testament to coach Patterson and the staff there that they’ve continued to inspire and engage those young men, and that’s what we want to try to do for these next couple of games, is to keep them playing hard, just to keep them fighting. You look across the landscape of college football and you watch how teams finish their seasons. And this game, the result, is not what we wanted, but is your team fighting? Are the kids playing really hard? Are they playing really hard for themselves and each other? And that’s what our group did tonight. Our production on offense held us back more than anything else.”

10. Players of the Game

Tortilla Tossin’ Player of the Game: Just one accolade handed out today, who is Austin McNamara, who had 9 punts for 56.4 yards per punt, 4 of them inside the 20, 2 touchbacks, and a long of 70 yards. That’s a helluva day.