10 Things: Texas Tech 30, Arizona State 22

1. Game Links:

2. Can I Start with the Defense? This defense went from looking like they were going to give up 50 points a game to being serviceable, to being pretty good. I don’t know what happened between Abilene Christian and now, but the defense has improved. By a lot. And McGuire said after the ACU that the defense actually did do good things during the preseason practice, but we were all pretty skeptical (I’m included) about whether that was even true and how good could the defense actually be. But they are flying around to the ball and they are giving maximum effort and they’ve shown genuine improvement. And the defense gave up 10 points in the first half and despite all 4 defensive penalties happening in the first half. I was concerned that Skattebo would run roughshod over Texas Tech, but the Sun Devils only averaged 3.1 yards a rush, including 2.5 in the first half. Kudos to Tim DeRuyter and the defensive staff for starting to turn that ship around. Texas Tech doesn’t win this game without an improved defense. The two 4th down stops, Mo Horn and Ben Roberts in the 1st half and Chapman Lewis in the 2nd half were big plays as was in the interception by C.J. Baskerville. That’s essentially 3 turnovers

3. Offense Was Not Pretty. But . . . they did enough to win and to take the ball and score when the offense had the first opportunity in the 2nd half to put the pressure on Arizona State to make it a 2-score game when they failed to score when they had the ball first in the 2nd half was terrific. And for Jalin Conyers to get the honors running the ball on a fairly inventive play, another twist, and in fact, it was 2 plays in a row that I thought were new plays, the play with Micah Hudson and the Conyers touchdown were both new to the playbook. I thought Tahj Brooks would have a tough game and it wasn’t easy, 27 carries for 117 yards and averaging 4.3 yards a game was a hard day’s work.

4. Mediocre Quarterback Play. And that’s okay. To be able to get a win and relying on your defense and running game and being fairly pedestrian is a huge deal. Morton completed only 55% of his passes for 201 yards and 2 touchdowns. But he had no interceptions and he threw the ball away when he needed to do so and even though he only went 24 of 44, he had 5 explosive plays throwing the ball and figuring out a way to win is a good sign. I’d also like to add that Morton was sacked once and there were 6 quarterback hurries. That’s 10 attempts that were affected by the pass defense.

5. Special Teams Shines. Burgess punts and pins one inside the 2-yard line while averaging 42 on 5 punts. Dooda Banks gets a blocked extra point. Both Gino Garcia and Reece Burkhard make all of their field goals. Meanwhile Arizona State has 2 penalties on kickoffs and think about when the last time that happened for Texas Tech (no jinx), a missed extra point that’s not blocked up properly and you realize how important special teams is.

6. 1st Down Woes. amazingly Texas Tech averaged just 4.2 yards for first downs and averaged 5 yards a run, but was just 7 of 16 passing the ball for 53 yards. The

7. Stats.

Texas Tech only gained 4.2 yards a game compared to 7.4 for Arizona State on 1st down and that’s really where the offense struggled. Texas Tech ran 18 times and passed 16, so pretty even with a slight favor to running the ball. I’d also add that it felt like Brooks was not gaining a ton of yards on 1st down.
Third downs was definitely something that Texas tech did well, converted 47% to just 39% for ASU and what killed ASU was that they were just 4 of 7, while Texas Tech was 4 of 4. Not only that, but Texas Tech was 6 of 10 on 3rd downs passing and ASU was 2 of 7.
40% of Texas Tech’s plays were passing plays, which is a bit high, you don’t want to be leveraged that much.
Texas Tech was 4 of 4 in the red zone and that included just 1 field goal.

8. Idle Thoughts.

Caleb Douglas is really good and he makes some tough catches. Josh Kelly is definitely exactly as billed, but Douglas is really good too. Douglas had 5 for 63 and Kelly had 10 for 89.
Don’t want to forget that JohnCarlos Miller had a really nice touchdown catch to start the game.
Cameron Dickey’s 16 yard run was really good. I think that Texas Tech needs more depth here, but he’s going to be good for a while.
I thought the offensive line was okay, but didn’t keep Morton clean enough.

9. Coach Comments.

Opening statement

“I was really proud of our football team today. At halftime it was 17 to 10, and they were in a really good spot mentally. It was quiet and we were trying to get everybody hydrated and everything. Man, I just started yelling. I like this more than last week. I know that’s going to shock everybody, 52-7. I’m not going to say that I wouldn’t want it to be 52-7, but it’s fun. Whenever I close my eyes and I think about football, this is what I think about. The playing off of each other, complementary football, the special teams having to go out and make big kicks, physical defense, and then we have the best back in the country and he helps us finish it off. Then, we get to run the best play in football, which is the victory (formation) and take the knee. Man, I’m really proud of them. I thought our guys fought really hard and it’s great to be 1-0 in Big 12 play.”

On the determination to run the football…

“Yeah, they’ve been giving up 65 yards a game. They’re really good. They’re front-set, and they’re physical. They do a good job of canceling gaps, but a couple of weeks ago, I talked to Matt Rhule, who y’all know is my mentor after the Washington State game, and one thing he said is, he goes, ‘y’all are one of the best teams in the country at running counter and you’ve went away from it. You didn’t do what you do because you almost gave people too much respect.’ Today and last week, coming into this game, it always helps to have (Tahj Brooks) back. I thought Cameron Dickey had a big run. He bounced off of a tackle that looked like it was going to be a tackle-for-a-loss. J’Koby Williams had a good run. What we do, we do it well and we’ve got to stick with it.”

On having the special teams play today as a safety blanket…

“It was funny. Chris Level said, ‘I guess we still have a kicking competition’, because, man, they just keep going out there and hitting them. It’s great. I thought two things. I thought Jack Burgess did a phenomenal job punting today. It’s frustrating. I wish we had a camera, which you don’t, most people don’t on the goal line, because you didn’t have an angle to say that it didn’t go in the end zone. I thought that Drae McCray did a great job of docking that ball back in, but I thought Jack punted really well today. Man, our kickers, they just keep coming up and they come up with some big kicks. So right there at the end of the game to keep it like 14 and then not even that, special teams overall. I mean, we blocked an extra point which then, I think it was eight points behind at one point because they blocked their point. So, I thought special teams played really well today.”

10. Tortilla Tossin’ Players of the Game.

Jack Burgess and Gino Garcia and Reese Burkhard have been stellar all year, Burgess particularly and typically special teams doesn’t get enough love.

Chapman Lewis with a couple of huge plays during the game and Maurion Horn doing the same thing. Those were huge plays and turned Arizona State over. Lewis had 7 tackles and a pass break-up and Horn had 5 tackles on the day.

The defensive line stood up and played really well. Shout-out to Amier Washington who had 4 tackles and .5 tackle for a loss. Quincy Ledet had 3 tackles, Dooda Banks, Harvey Dyson, and Jayden Cofield had a tackle. The linebackers cleaned up exactly like you want, Ben Roberts had 11 tackles and Jacob Rodriguez had 7. To limit a team to just 94 yards rushing when a similar team ran for over 200 is a huge deal.