1. Game Links:

Game Recap
Stats
Quotes
Highlights


2. Hello Darkness, My Old Friend. We’ve been here before, but it’s been a bit. I used to spend hours on this 10 Things and I’ve said before, and as you can imagine, this is the most difficult thing to do when there’s a loss. Especially like a loss last night. I’ll definitely get to some key stats and point some things out, but my guess is that you are not here for that. There’s a joke, that football is about feelings and we can discuss particular things and why those things happened, but that’s not going to be enough most likely.

3. Where the Offense Went Wrong. Maybe it’s a couple of things, it seemed like Wyoming was able to rush only a few without having to sacrifice a ton in coverage and receivers simply couldn’t shake free. In the second half, Kittley tried to open up the front by utilizing the screen game, but whether it was mistakes or turnovers or not making the play, the offense couldn’t get rolling. The offense simply wasn’t ready. The line wasn’t what I expected, I wanted them to dominate the line of scrimmage and that didn’t happen enough.

4. Where the Defense Went Wrong. I have a difficult time pinning too much on the defense, but the lack of awareness at times with bad penalties were a bit tough to watch. We’ll get to some of those penalties here shortly, but the defense only allowed 320 yards and 4.1 yards per play with 2 turnovers with that generally being enough to win a game. The inability to get Wyoming off the field and accounting for their quarterback on a consistent basis was probably the most maddening, so missed assignments when it mattered the most.

5. Bad Penalties.

• The penalty where Jessiah Pierre had the targeting call waived was the right call and this is a bit tricky because Pierre was leaving his feet at the same time that the quarterback initiated his slide. So, at the time he was going for the tackle, the quarterback was a runner.
• The penalty where Tyler Owens pushed the quarterback out of bounds was a bad call because the quarterback was in play and a runner. It was a bad call.
• I think it was the Malik Dunlap penalty after a play was also a terrible call. That was a 15-yarder that didn’t need to be called because that’s football.
• The hands to the face penalty was as obvious as the day was long and it negated an interception.

6. Injuries. Dennis Wilburn went out in the first half as did Jacob Rodriguez who went out early in the first half. I thought that Rodriguez’s absence was the most significant because he impacted the game early and think he would have been a bigger difference-maker.

7. Doink. We’re probably not having many of these conversations if Garcia’s field goal doesn’t doink off the uprights. The blocked field goal may be a situation where the line was pushed too far back, that’s what it looked like to me and don’t blame him for that. I didn’t think the attempt looked particularly low. And the missed field goal with a second left should have been 3 seconds.

8. Idle Thoughts.

• The missed field goal with a second left was mis-managed a bit by the lack of a timeout, which was utilized on defense when Wyoming had the ball and was probably called unnecessarily. I never know if that’s a DeRuyter call, but would guess that it is.
• I also don’t know why you blitz on that two-point conversion to lose the game. Yes, I get being aggressive, but all you had to do was force a bad play from a quarterback that struggled to complete half of his passes, why give him that opportunity. He had one hot-read and he nailed it.
• The lack of a real plan to start the second half on offense was disappointing. I expected fire and that wasn’t there.
• Texas Tech out-gained Wyoming by 111 yards.
• Texas Tech completed just 7 of 17 3rd downs and Wyoming was 6 of 15. Texas Tech’s average 3rd downs was 7.1 yards and Wyoming’s was 6.3
• Wyoming had just 3 penalties for 15 yards compared to 7 for 68 for Texas Tech.
• Texas Tech was only in the red zone twice all game long and Wyoming was in the red zone 3 times.
• Wyoming had a rushing success rate of 33% and an offensive success rate of 27%, compared to 47% and 34% for Texas Tech. Anything below 30% is terrible, which means that the offense was not clicking for Texas Tech, the rushing offense was fine, but the overall offensive success wasn’t up to par. It also means that Texas Tech gifted penalty yards to Wyoming to attribute their offensive success.
• Don’t ever let anyone ever tell you that missing a top 10 talent like Tyree Wilson won’t make a difference.

9. Coach Comments. Head coach Joey McGuire:

:You know hate it for the guys, really frustrating for the guys in that locker room. You know I thought that we came out, started fast and then we allowed them to get back into the game. Hats off to Wyoming for playing so hard, playing into overtime. You know, you look in that second quarter, really the third quarter, too man, self-inflicted wounds. I said that at halftime to the guys, you know, too many penalties that continued drives. And, you know, going into all week, we talked about, you know, eliminating bad football. A lot of times in week one, whenever you’re sitting there looking, watching teams, watching tonight, you know you get some penalties you don’t want to have. Your timings not where you want it to be. And I thought we came out and we played really fast, played really hard, and I just don’t know how we got out of whack. That’s on me. We just got to figure it out, you know, going into this next week.”

“I just talked to them, you know you can’t, when it’s early in the season, you can’t let this game define who you are. You can chose to let it define who you are, but there’s going to be a game next week. And so, you get 24 hours for a win or a loss, it’s going to hurt, I know it hurts, they’re hurting right now, they put a lot of work in to be a good football team, and we are a good football team. So now you just make sure that this week and this game doesn’t carry over into a game at home, you know, against a really good football team that’s coming in to play us. And so, you have a choice, man, you have a choice to let that carry into next week, we’re just not going to let it. That’s my job and I got to figure out what went wrong tonight and how we got out of kilter. I mean, you look in the first quarter and it’s almost like we get those turnovers, we’re scoring at will and then, you know, we don’t put any points on the board for, I guess, another two quarters. The second and third quarter, I don’t think we scored. An so, now you just got to figure that out. Again, we never talk about going undefeated, we never talk about anything other than this week, and Big 12 play. We got to just figure out how to not let this game carry over into the next game.”

“I thought our guys were pretty fresh and, you know, we played a lot of guys. And so, I didn’t feel like, I think if you asked the players, I mean, there wasn’t anything to where they felt, that they felt that they were tired or anything. I mean I’m sure it got to them a little bit but I thought they played well, it definitely didn’t hurt us in the first quarter, you know, so that’s not what got us in the second or third. What got us in the second and third was just not executing. You know, and it was a great environment tonight, I think we’ve got to build off of that, too, you know. It was really loud at different times, that’s good for us, we’ve got to learn from that because we’ve got some really tough road games coming up.”

“Well, if we’re going to continue drives, we’re going intercept balls, and we’re going to have self-inflicted wounds, which is on the coaches, I mean anytime you have penalties it’s all about discipline, and where your eyes are and doing your job and being in the right spot. I still think this team is really good, I think we’re a better team, but you can’t be a better team and their first drive we had three penalties, their first touchdown we had three penalties, their second touchdown we had a fifteen yarder. I think their third score, wait no, right before half we intercept the ball and we give it right back to them because we have a penalty for hands to the face. So I think, up until, I could be wrong, the points in the fourth quarter, the points were scored off of penalties on the defensive side of the ball.”

10. Tortilla Tossin’ Players of the Game.

Myles Price was good, 6 for 65 with a touchdown and a catch rate of 67%, wishing he and Drae McCrae would have been utilized more underneath and in space.

Jerand Bradley maybe would have changed everything if he would have come down with the pass near the goal line. He had 8 for 88 with a touchdown and had a catch rate of 57%.

Jessiah Pierre was maybe the best player on the field for Texas Tech. 14 tackles including 10 solo.