Lincoln Riley's 'unique perspective' on Lubbock shows why it's been so hard for Oklahoma there

Whether OU has had elite teams or average ones, playing Texas Tech on the dusty plains of West Texas has come with unforeseen and usually weird challenges

Oklahoma has almost never had it easy in Lubbock.

Sometimes the Sooners have had average teams (2005, 2009) and sometimes they’ve had elite teams (2003, 2018) and playing at Texas Tech has almost always been a fight.

“It just always has,” OU coach Lincoln Riley said Tuesday at his weekly press conference.

Kyler Murray at Texas Tech in 2018

Michael C. Johnson-USA TODAY Sports

Riley’s perspective covers that of a former Texas Tech player, a former Texas Tech coach, and now a Texas Tech opponent. He can offer insight that few others can about why it’s such a challenge for the Sooners to perform at Jones Stadium.

“Like you said, I do have a unique perspective, like many on the staff having been there,” he said. “I mean, I don’t want to presume what coach (Matt) Wells or his players are thinking, but I know when you’re at Texas Tech — or when I was there — any time a Texas or an OU came to town, it was a big deal. I would imagine that hasn't changed.

“But it’s a big deal for us to go to Lubbock. You know, it’s a great opportunity. Road night games are as fun as it gets, and especially there. I mean, I think every time we’ve been there too, it's been a night game. So, yeah, I mean, it’s challenging road football.”

OU is 8-4 in Lubbock and has won four straight. But none of them have been easy.

• The Sooners’ 2003 team looked unbeatable until a 59-25 win at Tech. The final score sounds easy enough, but students of OU history will recall that game (and the Baylor game before it) as the one that gave Kansas State the blueprint for blitzing Jason White in the Big 12 Championship Game two weeks later. OU beat Tech by a comfortable margin, but playing the Red Raiders that night took an irreplaceable toll.

• The 2005 game was the Big 12’s first year using replay review, and officials botched two calls (and had to use replay to overturn an obvious incompletion in the end zone) that allowed the Red Raiders to score on their final drive and win the game — one an errant spot on a deflected catch by Danny Amendola, and the other when they awarded Taurean Henderson a touchdown (and a 23-21 win) after his backside had touched the turf.

• Sam Bradford got concussed in the 2007 game as he tried to make a tackle after Allen Patrick’s early fumble, and at the bottom of the pile, 350-pound Duke Robinson and a Tech player fell on top of Bradford and sent him to the sideline. Joey Halzle’s late comeback fell short in a 34-27 Tech win.

• The Sooners’ 2009 team struggled offensively all year with Landry Jones replacing Bradford, but had one of the best defenses of the Bob Stoops era — yet inexplicably got trampled 41-13 in Lubbock.

• Since Riley has been at OU, Baker Mayfield outdueled Patrick Mahomes 66-59 in 2016, and Kyler Murray outlasted Alan Bowman and Jett Duffey 51-46 in 2018. The Mayfield-Mahomes showdown broke the NCAA record with 1,708 combined yards total offense, Mayfield set the OU record with seven TD passes, and Mahomes tied an NCAA record with 734 yards passing and set a new one with 819 total yards while also accounting for seven touchdowns.

“We’ve played against some pretty good players up there the last several years that have made plays,” Riley said. “Our guys have made plays, and there's been a lot of back and forth. So you know, the last several years been down there, (it’s been) three starting NFL quarterbacks playing in those games, just like that.”

Texas Tech (2-3 overall, 1-3 in Big 12 play) is coming off a clutch win over West Virginia last week and may have turned a corner.

This young Oklahoma (3-2, 2-2) team has shown plenty of growth in its last two games, outlasting Texas in four overtimes and then putting a wire-to-wire beatdown on TCU last week in Fort Worth.

But after spending the entire month of October away from Norman, have these Sooners matured enough to handle whatever tricky circumstances might crop up on Halloween night in Lubbock?

“It’s a fun place to play, but it’s also challenging, no question,” Riley said. “Our maturity, I hope that it’s grown to that point.

“All we do right now is play on the road apparently, so hopefully, we’re getting used to it.”

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