Commentary: Fight and grit? Raiders have plenty

Another Texas Tech home football game, another walk-off field goal in overtime, another storming of the field. The first two were in the bright sunshine and mid-80s of September, and the final one in the cold and mid-30s of nighttime November.

It can be argued if two of them were actually worthy of such postgame fan spillage, but what can’t be argued is the fight and grit from the Red Raiders that got them to that point.

The last one was the regular-season finale on Thanksgiving weekend, a 51-48 overtime thriller over Oklahoma on Saturday in a game that the Red Raiders trailed by 18 points in the second quarter. It’s a win that’s a milestone in many ways:

• It was Tech’s seventh, the first time in the regular season to notch a 7-5 record since Patrick Mahomes was a sophomore quarterback in 2015. It was done against the country’s sixth-toughest strength of schedule.

• It gave the Raiders a 5-4 record in the Big 12, the first winning conference record since 2009. Tech, picked ninth in the 10-team league in the preseason, finished fourth.

• It gave Tech wins over both Texas and Oklahoma, the first time in program history that happened in the same season.

• It restored Jones AT&T Stadium as a tough place to play. Lubbock has lost that aura over the years, but Tech finished 6-1 on its home schedule.

Those are the hard numbers, the result of 99 points, 1,271 yards, 58 first downs and 31 possessions spread out over 3 hours and 40 minutes.

The bigger story is first-year coach Joey McGuire continues to chisel away at the old Tech culture of playing well enough to lose, no-showing at times, and the latest to overcome, laying an egg after modest success.

The Raiders were coming off a 14-10 win at Iowa State, a place they hadn’t won since 2014. The win in single-digit chill factor was the sixth this season to earn them bowl eligibility. Now, the Raiders had a week for everyone to tell them how they had arrived.

Recent history has shown when Tech has a chance to build on a road win and come back to play at home, bad things happen. Under Matt Wells last year, Tech won at West Virginia, played an average TCU for homecoming and trailed 35-10 at halftime in a 52-31 loss. Under Kliff Kingsbury in 2018, Tech followed a 41-17 win at No. 15 Oklahoma State with a 42-34 home loss to West Virginia, one the Raiders trailed 28-7 after the first quarter.

And to prove that no coach is immune, under Tommy Tuberville in 2011, Tech upset No. 3 Oklahoma, 41-38. Little old Iowa State was the homecoming fodder the next week and a large crowd watched dumbfounded as Tech was embarrassed, 41-7.

So when Oklahoma took a 14-0 lead before the strains of the national anthem had barely left Jones Stadium, this was just following a decades-old script. This is far from a vintage OU team. In fact, the Sooners were 6-5, same as Tech, and fans have wondered loudly if Brent Venables is the answer at coach.

But OU looked like one of its typical offensive powerhouses especially early. When Marvin Mims, Jr. was all alone to trot in to complete a 77-yard TD pass from Dillon Gabriel, OU led 24-6 with 6:25 to play in the first half.

The heater in the car was sounding pretty good to the 51,126 who bundled up to watch this. Most had seen this a little too often.

Then, the darndest thing happened. At halftime, Tech had cut the lead to 24-23, scoring 17 points in the last 3:09 aided by an interception by Dadrion Taylor-Demerson, who grew up 27 miles from the OU campus in Midwest City. Game on.

“One thing I will continue to say is you will never question about how hard our players are going to play,” McGuire said, “and how long and how much fight they have in them. If we need extra football to win games, we’ll go into overtime and win games.”

That’s what happened. There were five second-half lead changes as the Raiders and Sooners traded six touchdowns and two field goals, the final one of 43 yards by Tech’s Trey Wolff with three seconds left in regulation to send the game into OT at 48-48.

When OU’s Zach Schmit barely missed a 34-yard field goal, that opened the door for Tech. Wolff closed it with a 35-yard field goal for the win, 51-48.

To think that Tech two months earlier came from 14 points down in the second half to defeat Texas in overtime and McGuire’s culture reset of playing hard for 60 minutes is not empty bluster.

Shough, who threw for 436 yards, had some surprising salty comments afterward that spoke to his own confidence and future while providing a glimpse that this Tech team plays with much more of an edge than previous ones.

It’s almost mind-boggling that if Tech had beaten Kansas State – a game the Raiders lost, 37-28, with essentially a third-string quarterback -- it would be the Raiders playing in the Big 12 title game this weekend.

Instead, the next game is likely the Cheez-Its Bowl in Orlando, Fla., a just reward for a gritting team changing the culture in a coach’s first foundation-setting year.

Jon Mark Beilue is a 1981 graduate of Texas Tech. He has been writing about Red Raiders sports for five decades.