Arizona State (3-0) vs. Texas Tech (2-1)

When: Saturday, September 21st @ 2:30 pm
Where: Jones AT&T Stadium | Lubbock, TX
TV & Streaming: FS1
Radio: TuneIn Radio
The Line: Texas Tech -3.5
Weather: PM Showers, 84-61
The Sun Devils are 3-0, but not by much. An opening blowing win at home against Wyoming was great, then a win at home against what might be a pretty terrible Mississippi State team, and then surviving in San Marcos against Texas State, 31-28 on Thursday night. So they’ve had a few extra days to get ready for Texas Tech and I don’t like that necessarily, but here we are.

Head coach Kenny Dillingham looks way too young to be a head coach, but he’s the alum that’s back home at Tempe to turn the program around after the disaster that was Herm Edwards. Dillingham is an offensive guru, as the OC at Memphis, Auburn, Florida State, and Oregon before becoming the head coach at ASU.

I’d add that the turnaround for Dillingham and Arizona State is not an easy task, similar to Texas Tech when Kliff Kingsbury had to take over, the program was in shambles in different ways. Edwards was a disaster of a hire and Antonio Pierce just made things worse.

The offensive coordinator is Marcus Arroyo, who was the head coach at UNLV before arriving at Tempe. Much like Dillingham, Arroyo was at Oregon as the OC and was there when Justin Herbert was the signal caller. Prior to that, Arroyo was at Oklahoma State for a couple of years, from 2015 and 2016, as the running backs coach.

The defensive coordinator is Brian Ward, who was at Washington State for one year in 2022, and had previous staps at Nevada, Syracuse, Bowling Green, etc.

STOCK UP:

+ Confidence. It’s good to have confidence heading into conference play, just emotionally to feel better about yourselves gives you a bit more than constantly feeling like you have underachieved. I don’t think the coaches will let them rest on their laurels, but it’s good to feel good.

+ High effort from the defense. They won’t be holding teams like they did against North Texas during most of the season, but that was really great effort. As I wrote after the game, everything just fell into place. McGuire said after the game that much of defense is effort and getting to the spots and forcing the opposing offense into places that you want them to be and other than the really long touchdown catch, the defense did that. Running to the ball and making a huge effort to be in on the play. maybe that’s why no one had more than 5 tackles.

+ Another home game. Texas Tech gets to be at home yet again and the distinction between playing at home and on the road is significant for this program. McGuire will need to pull out a road win at some point this season. For now, it’s good vibes and if the offense is firing like it was on Saturday I think this is a game that Texas Tech should win.

STOCK DOWN:

– Fans ability to complain about one less thing. Yeah, Micah Hudson had some good yards and saw good snaps, which means that there’s one less thing for them to complain about in the off-week. Not only that, but Behren Morton played well, so there’s not a quarterback controversy this week. But there’s always next week.

– Kansas is in a bad way without Andy Kotelnicki who left for Penn State in the offseason. I think that Kotelnicki had been with Lance Leipold since he was at Buffalot. Kotelnicki was really good at his job and then Leipold hired Jeff Grimes, who led Baylor to the 70th best offense before being fired last year. Leipold has pretty much done everything right, but he may want a do-over and hire ACU’s offensive coordinator (that’s what I would do).

– Still need more pressure. North Texas did a good job of getting the ball out quickly and there wasn’t a ton of opportunity to get to the quarterback. That still has to be a point of emphasis and with just 1 registered hurry this past week, I think this is going to have to be addressed in an on-going basis

BIG 12 PUZZLE:

Last Week: Maybe the biggest win was Kansas State’s win at home against Arizona, 31-7. Dominating by the Cats. Surprising for me is that Kansas is struggling offensively, not a surprise given their OC last year is at Penn State now, and lost to UNLV. West Virginia lost to Pitt, which I am sure infuriates all Mountaineer fans. UCF came back against TCU, scoring 15 points in the 4th quarter, to upset the Frogs.

This Week: The game of the week is Utah at Oklahoma State. We get to see who the class of the Big 12 actually is. Also, Kansas State is on the road against the offensively challenged BYU and Kansas is at West Virginia as both teams probably want to get back on track. Baylor is at Colorado and is the big game on FOX. Thanks Deion.

NEWS:

Lubbock Avalanche-Journal’s Don Williams: Now that’s the Texas Tech football attack people want to see | Don Williams

UNT defensive coordinator Matt Caponi used to work on the defensive staff at Iowa State under Jon Heacock, the venerable DC who was known to make Patrick Mahomes II look human. Heacock’s scheming has been the source of Tech nightmares. The Mean Green run a similar look to the Cyclones, but Morton wasn’t having it.

“They (safeties) play so low,” Morton said, “we knew we were going to have the middle of the field open with play-action, pulling the free safety in the middle of the field down, because they think they’ve got to stop the run. They’ve got to defend TB (Brooks). When they bit, the middle of the field was open.”

Dallas Morning News’ Justin Apodaca: 5 takeaways from Texas Tech-North Texas: Red Raiders answer doubts in thumping of UNT

Improved defensive effort
The Tech defense has been a major point of struggle throughout the early stages of the season, giving up lots of passing yards in the opener and struggling against the run last weekend, but it was a different story against the Mean Green.

Tech created three turnovers, all interceptions, in the first half, helping create the large margin for the offense. Bralyn Lux, Chapman Lewis and Bryce Ramirez all came down with the ball on the interceptions.

Red Raider Sports’ Jarrett Ramirez: Texas Tech’s defense gets its swagger back from Mean Green domination

“I think it was really just going back to the basics,” boundary safety CJ Baskerville said following the win. “We really honed in on our skills with eyes and communication and that was a lot better this week. That showed on the times when they were trying to do things to us. As long as we communicate and be on the same page, then we’re going to get the result we want. I thought that was the biggest difference from last week. Also the “want” to get to the ball, like guys were flying around this week. It was getting better as each week went on but today was by far the best I’ve seen the guys fly around the field.”

Lubbock Avalanche-Journal’s Don Williams: Texas Tech football: Ball-hawking defense fuels Red Raiders’ rout of North Texas

“This is definitely a real feel-good win going into league play because that’s a big deal,” Baskerville said. “I do believe it’s going to carry over. In fall camp, we had a bunch of swagger, and the first game you get almost 50 points dropped on you, doesn’t feel good to the heart.

“To be able to go out there today, fly around and have fun, win on all phases of the ball definitely adds some swagger back in our program.”