GRIT & GUILE: Red Raiders found exactly what they needed to top WVU

Texas Tech took its fans on the sports psychology version of a rollercoaster ride on Saturday, playing perhaps its best 30 minutes of the season then fading for quite a while before grinding out the last quarter.

Ended on a pretty sweet note, huh?

Perfect performance? As is almost always the case, there were some flaws. Perfect outcome under the circumstances, though? Absolutely when you factor in the dearth of manpower the Red Raiders were managing when they took the field at Milan Puskar Stadium.

In fact, the grit and intestinal fortitude that Texas Tech had to dig deep for – all week leading up to the game, once it boarded the plane East knowing who was missing and then finally as the final 15 minutes unfolded -- arguably makes this as big a victory as the program has notched in recent memory.

The glaring problem for the Red Raiders during WVU’s rally was a brief trend toward being conservative on offense, which was a major culprit in back-to-back three-and-outs. Once the realization re-emerged that it was OK to give Henry Colombi the full menu and let him go to work, though, Tech’s offense rediscovered its groove.

Which is a perfect segue to who symbolized the Red Raiders’ performance and perhaps needs to keep emerging until Tyler Shough is ready to take the wheel again.

Colombi’s guts to stand in the pocket as defensive players swarm around him, blended with his continued knack to look downfield for big plays is a pleasant silver lining to losing Shough to a collarbone injury. The two ice-in-his-veins fourth-quarter passes to Loic Fouonji and Kaylon Geiger ate up a combined 88 yards on two huge field-goal drives covering 132 yards.

The ripple effect of those deep shots was that the Mountaineers had to loosen up the front seven and SaRodorick Thompson seized on that on the game-winning drive for back-to-back runs of 16 and 13 yards. All of that goes hand-in-hand and Colombi’s fingerprints were prominent on the two clutch drives the Red Raiders had to have to prevail.

Texas Tech didn’t deliver a perfect performance to outlast the Mountaineers for a coveted Big 12 road win, but perfect performances are few and far between in sports. How boring would that be?

Nope, sports are better when there is drama, shifting emotions and something to brag about/harp on (depending on your general outlook on life). The phrase that ABC Sports made famous in the 1970s wasn’t concocted by accident: The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

These games mean something special to a lot of us, but they matter to the players and coaches involved more than anybody else. Watching Texas Tech find the guile and grit to bounce back from a humbling loss and then find a way to win on the road could be a major step forward this season and beyond.

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Randy Rosetta is the Managing Editor of RedRaiderSports.com

Contact him at (806) 407-0188 or RandyRRS@gmail.com

Twitter | @RandyRosetta or @RedRaiderSports

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