Texas Tech's Hot Start Too Much for Mountaineers

Texas Tech's 35 first half points buries West Virginia

Morgantown, WV – The Texas Tech Red Raiders (4-5, 2-4) scored on their first five possessions on their way to a 38-17 drubbing of the West Virginia Mountaineers (3-6, 1-5). The story of the Mountaineer offense all season long has been beating themselves and that continued again with dropped passes and turnovers that could have kept West Virginia in the game early to give themselves a chance but was never able to overcome their mistakes.

The Red Raiders Quarterback Jett Duffy took advantage of broken coverage twice to receiver Dalton Rigdon for 34 yards and Erik Ezukanma for 24 yards got Texas Tech knocking on the door at the West Virginia five-yard line. Ta'Zhawn Henry punched in from two yards out, three plays later.

West Virginia quarterback Austin Kendall began their opening drive throwing three consecutive darts to Sam James for 19 yards and then dropped a dime in between two defenders to George Campbell over the middle - down to the Texas Tech six-yard line. However, a five-yard loss then a potential game-tying pass dropped by Winston Wright before Kendall was tackled at the line of scrimmage on third down resulted in the Mountaineers settling for a 30-yard field goal from Casey Legg.

On the first play of the ensuing possession, Duffy and Rigdon again benefited from busted coverage, this time for the 81-yard touchdown.

On the Mountaineers first play, Kendall hit George Campbell but the ball bounced off his hands and into the arms of Douglass Coleman and he returned it 30 yards down to the West Virginia 24-yard line. After two completions for 11 yards, Henry carried it four-straight to punch it in the endzone and the Texas Tech Raider were up 21-3 with 4:52 left in the first quarter.

After West Virginia moved the ball down into Tech territory, on fourth and 11, Kendall was sacked as Riko Jeffers knocked the ball loose before Austin’s arm began the move forward and it propelled 25 yards down to the Red Raider 13.

Texas Tech quickly went back to work driving 87 yards on nine plays to take a 28-3 lead.

The Mountaineers finally found the endzone and it all started with a five-yard pass to tight end Jovanni Haskins. A completion to Sam James for 17 yards followed up by a 13-yard run from Kennedy McKoy setup a backward pass to Isaiah Isdale – who then heaved it back across the field to McKoy for the West Virginia touchdown.

Nonetheless, the route was on and after a personal foul on the kickoff gave Texas Tech the ball near midfield. The Mountaineer secondary gave up another 38 yards through the air and SaRodorick Thompson finished the drive walking it in for six on fourth and goal from the two.

“We got off to an extremely poor start defensively,” said West Virginia head coach Neal Brown. “They scored on, I think, their opening five drives of the game. We settled down and did some things better, but we’ve got to be ready to go defensively and we weren’t. We didn’t get any pressure on the quarterback all day. He stood back there. They were able to run the ball efficiently on us. The run totals were just okay, but they ran the ball efficiently.”

Neal Brown later went into detail on why the defense struggled, “They came out and clearly had a good plan,” he said. “They tempoed us. I didn’t think we handled the tempo very well at all. I didn’t think we played with the same sense of urgency upfront… They made plays. And a lot of those plays were one on one. Whether it was 28 running through tackles or them blocking us upfront. I knew their o-line was good – they blocked us. We had multiple opportunities to make plays in the secondary – we didn’t make those plays.”

While the West Virginia defense started to make, the Mountaineers had an opportunity after Kendall hit Sam James over the middle for 51 yards – that could have been six if the ball would have been thrown a little earlier and out in from of him, instead James had to slow down and wait for the ball and that let the defenders catch up to him. The Mountaineers were facing fourth and four at the Tech 22-yard line and a fade pattern to Sam James fell incomplete. A ball James should have brought down.

“Offensively, here’s the deal. We did some good things offensively. But we do things to beat ourselves over and over again. Drops. How many did we have? Seven? Seven drops. The turnovers - some of the turnovers happened because we have missed assignments. And then missed opportunities in the red zone. To me, the game came down - it was 21 points - the game comes down to turnovers and missed opportunities in the red zone. We had three trips to the red zone. I think we went for it on all fourth downs. We lose by 21 and we leave 21 points out there.”

Trailing 35-10 at the start of the third quarter, West Virginia again got deep into Red Raider territory and on fourth and six from the 11-yard line, it appeared Haskins ran the wrong route as he and Ali Jennings knocked the ball from one another in the back of the endzone and again the Mountaineers came away empty-handed.

The game was well in hand and that may have been the reason for some defensive success, holding Texas Tech off the board and 74 yards of total offense in the third quarter.

Mistakes continued to pile up as Winston Wright fumbled at midfield and then on West Virginia’s following possession, the Mountaineers were facing another fourth down situation inside the red zone. Neal Brown called a flea-flicker and as Kendall was under pressure, he underthrew the pass and it was picked off by corner DeMarcus Fields.

Jarrett Deoge came in towards the end of the quarter and went three and out on his first series and as the game was winding the down the offense had a lot of the same results.

“I thought he did some good things,” said Brown. “The same things that plagued Jarret are the same things that plagued Austin. We dropped the ball; we didn’t do a great job in protection. I’ll say this: I wish quarterback was our problem. Because that’s an easy fix.”

Texas Tech added a 20-yard field goal early in the fourth to make it 38-10.

Deoge led the offense on 5-6 from through the air for 59 yards including a swing pass to Tony Mathis Jr – who then ran it in from nine yards for the touchdown with five seconds remaining in the game as the Mountaineers fell 38-17. 

Credit to Texas Tech," said Brown. "(Coach) Matt (Wells) had his guys ready to go. But, we’ve got to be better. Period. I’ll take our fair share as coaches, but we’ve got to make plays when it’s time to make plays. We didn’t do it. We didn’t do that today. I thought we had some good individual performances but at the end of the day, it’s not good enough.