10 Things: Texas Tech 35, Houston 11

1. Game Links:

Ed. Note: I did not get to watch one second of the game. I finished my 50k around 4:30 PCT yesterday and was pretty well spent afterwards. These notes are short and sweet as I’m getting on a plane in an hour to go home. Thus, these 10 Things are based just off of stats.

2. Good, but . . . The lack of touchdowns in the red zone was something that head coach mentioned after the game. Some of it self-inflicted because of penalties and two because of drops. The penalties continues to plague this team and I’d love to see them figure that out.

3. Grades. Would love your assessment. These are mine based off of stats only.

A-	PASS OFFENSE
Houston had 2 sacks and no other quarterback hurries, and Behren Morton completed 70% of his passes for 8.6 yards per pass, which is good enough.
A	RUN OFFENSE
J’Koby Williams and Cameron Dickey continue to be steamrollers, rushing for 207 collectively and 70 yards receiving, including a Dickey touchdown.
A+	PASS DEFENSE
Only 164 passing yards is a win and allowing Houston to only complete 40% of their passes is something.
A+	RUN DEFENSE
Just 103 rushing yards and 3.4 yards per rush. Appears to have dominated the line of scrimmage (again).
A	SPECIAL TEAMS
5 for & on field goals, while Burgess averaged 43 yards a punt, including 1 inside the 20. The return game seemed good, Eakin had 1 for 30 yards and Micah Hudson got some action.
A	COACHING
The red zone and penalty issues seemed to be the biggest issues and those are intertwined. Regardless, to win by 24 on the road when favored by 12 or so? I’ll take that.

4. Dominant Defense. Texas Tech had 90 offensive plays to just 55 for Houston and Houston managed only 94 yards in the second half, including 29 passing yards. They did not have an offensive answer to Texas Tech’s defense. Completely dominated in the 2nd half for sure.

5. Better Morton. The offense was much better, especially in the 1st half, over 344 yards in the 1st half alone, heck Texas Tech had more yards in the 1st half alone than Houston had all game (344 to 267). No picks for Morton. Houston appeared to be playing back all game long and didn’t want to allow Morton to carve them up. His pass to Dickey was special.

6. Bad on 1st Downs. Weird stat of the day. Texas Tech averaged just 4.9 yards on 1st down, while Houston averaged 8.2. Now, Texas Tech had 39 1st downs and Houston had just 23, but they were great passing the ball on 1st down.

7. Stats.

Houston was 1 of 12 on 3rd down. Insane. They were forced to go for it on 4th, where they were 2 of 5. Their average down and distance was 7.8 needed for a 1st down. Went 0-5 on 3rd and long and 1-4 on 3rd and short. Houston gained an averaged of 2.8 yards on 3rd down.
Texas Tech was 9 of 18, which is just fine and only needed an average of 5.4 yards to go on 3rd down. They gained an average of 10.2 yards on 3rd down.
Texas Tech was in passing downs just 26% of the time, which means that again, they were ahead of the chains all game long.
Texas Tech was on Houston’s side of the field 60% of the time, while Houston was only on Texas Tech’s 35% of the time.
Texas Tech devoured the ball this game, possessing it 37:58 minutes while Houston only had it 22:02 minutes.

8. Idle Thoughts.

I’ll leave you all to leave your idle thoughts.

9. Coach Comments.

No transcript from the official site.

10. Tortilla Tossin’ Players of the Game.

Cam Dickey and J’Koby Williams had 280 combined yards and 3 touchdowns. They are a pretty special duo.

Shout-out to Brenden Jordan who got his first interception of his career.

David Bailey with 2 sacks on the day and I think generally causing all sorts of havoc for Houston. Same thing for Jacob Rodriguez who finished with just 5 tackles, but had 2 tackles for loss, an interception and 2 pass break-ups. That’s a pretty solid day.