How does Texas Tech football prepare before playing BYU a second time?
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Joey McGuire loves AT&T Stadium. A noted Cowboys fan, McGuire has good experiences inside Jerry World, as do many of his Texas Tech football players, who have won titles in the stadium before.
To bring home the coveted Big 12 Championship trophy, which already has a spot waiting for it in the Womble Football Center, McGuire and his staff will have to figure out how to once again contain the BYU Cougars.
Things worked out pretty well the first time around, Texas Tech dominating its way to a 29-7 victory with noted alum Patrick Mahomes and ESPN’s College GameDay in attendance. Neither team, though, was particularly thrilled about their performance in that first matchup.
For BYU, the Cougars have insisted for weeks that the millions who watched the Red Raiders manhandle them, giving BYU its first (and only) loss to this point, is not the team head coach Kalani Sitake has come to know.
“We did not show up our best,” Sitake said during Monday’s Zoom press conference to preview the title clash. “A lot of that had to do with Texas Tech. Texas Tech is a complete team with a great coach, great coaching staff, and all three phases, they play amazing football. I think they’re the best team in the country. So when you look at it that way, we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
The Red Raiders have made light work of everybody on their schedule aside from the loss at Arizona State, when they played without starting quarterback Behren Morton. Joey McGuire said his QB is feeling as good as he has all season, and the results speak to that.
Starting with the BYU game, the Red Raiders have outscored their opponents 116-16 over the last three games of the regular season. That includes the 22-point win over the Cougars where Texas Tech had to settle for five field goals due to inefficiencies in the red zone.
“We were frustrated,” McGuire said of the first BYU game. “We had a couple drops in the end zone, and then you also go back, I think that next week, not to just change anything, but the (CFP) committee said that we weren’t scoring enough in the red zone. I think we’ve been one of the best teams in the country since that statement in the red zone. But it comes down to execution. They’re really not doing anything different than just executing at a really high level.”
Football is a different animal to other sports in that teams rarely meet each other a second time during a season. That’s the wrinkle for both Texas Tech and BYU. McGuire said the main point he’ll talk to his players about is their why, the reason for putting in even more focus and attention when they already have a successful result against the Cougars.
McGuire had a few instances of this during his coaching career at Cedar Hill, saying his son — Tech running back’s coach Garret McGuire — reminds him frequently about one such instance where Cedar Hill defeated DeSoto in double overtime during the regular season, then pounded them in the playoff rematch.
“I asked the coaches yesterday in our staff meeting,” McGuire said, “to really dig in to the first game of where we missed the mark, some stuff where they could take advantage of us, where we could take advantage of them.”
To prepare for the rematch, McGuire said he’s working his way back on BYU film, focusing on their most recent games against UCF, TCU and Cincinnati before rewatching the Nov. 8 game again.
“We’ve played each other and we kind of know our strengths and weaknesses,” McGuire said, “and it’s going to come down to. … I know that they’re frustrated, they feel like they left a lot on the field, we feel the same way.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Tricks of the trade in Texas Tech football’s prep for Big 12 championship
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