Texas Tech football's emerging identity can transcend seasons | Williams
Periodically this season, people have asked the identity of the Texas Tech football team as if pounding Tahj Brooks, the FBS's fifth-leading rusher with its second most carries, isn't an identity.
Another, even better identity, is emerging: Team for November.
In their first two seasons under Joey McGuire, the Red Raiders are 6-1 in the last month of the regular season. They did it again Saturday, rallying from a two-touchdown deficit to beat Central Florida 24-23 at Jones AT&T Stadium.
Now, a 6-5 record is nothing to shout about, and Tech will have to spring a major upset Friday at No. 7 Texas to avoid 6-6. On the other hand, the Red Raiders are going to finish with a winning record in the Big 12 for the second year in a row. That's progress for a program that went sub-.500 in the conference each of the previous 12 years.
"Starting off 1-and-3, nobody in America would have thought we would be bowl eligible," Tech safety Julien (C.J.) Baskerville said. "For us to play the way that we have and go through adversity and injuries and the events that we've gone through and still be bowl eligible and now have a winning record in the Big 12 no matter how we finish, it's a big deal."
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Last year, Tech was 4-5 before it ran the table against Kansas, Iowa State, Oklahoma and Mississippi in the Texas Bowl. This year, the Red Raiders have it going again with consecutive conquests of TCU, Kansas and UCF.
That's a refreshing change compared to the decade previous. So many Septembers that started with promise. Rarely did those lead to anything meaningful.
Now the Red Raiders are going about it the other way. Unexpected early losses to at Wyoming and West Virginia, sandwiched around a missed opportunity to beat Oregon, put Tech on the ropes right off the bat.
"Starting the season 1-and-3 and battling back to six wins is something that tells a lot about a team," quarterback Behren Morton said after he threw for 256 yards and two touchdowns. "It speaks volumes for both sides of the ball and special teams too.
"I think this team is a really gritty team that wants to be great. Obviously, things haven't rolled our way early, but it kind of turned around and we're making something out of nothing, for sure."
Saturday's game was analogous to the season. Using the wizardry of dual-threat quarterback John Rhys Plumlee, UCF went up 14-0 in the first quarter. Tech's two early scoring chances died on downs at the UCF 8- and 30-yard lines.
Then the Tech defense pulled itself together for the most part, and the Red Raiders pulled out another one. Of those six November victories the past two seasons, five have been in one-score games.
How do the Raiders weather the storms?
"I think one of the biggest things, whenever you're around 97, 95, 1, they really do have a lot of pride of Texas Tech," McGuire said, referring to the jersey numbers of senior-year defenders Tony Bradford, Jaylon Hutchings and Dadrion Taylor-Demerson. "They have this sense of, 'This university and this city have done a lot for me,' and they want to repay it.
"So whenever you have that kind of mindset, whenever good things happen, you continue to work. But whenever bad things happen, you just keep playing."
McGuire thanked Sonny Cumbie, the Red Raiders' interim head coach when he took over, for keeping players in the right frame of mind at the end of the 2021 season. They won as double-digit underdogs in November against Iowa State and in the Liberty Bowl over Mississippi State.
McGuire says being bowl eligible is the floor for expectations for his program. The Red Raiders might do little more than that this season. Tech beating Texas in Austin would be the upset of the year in the Big 12. And a bowl opponent for a 6-6 Tech team might not even be from a power-five conference.
Considering where the Red Raiders were at the end of September, it beats the alternative. But more important is what the Red Raiders are showing two years in a row in November, this penchant for winning close games one week after another.
That's something that can carry over.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech football's emerging identity can transcend seasons | Williams
