Joey McGuire's thoughts after first loss to Arizona State
The Red Raiders weren’t able to find much momentum today and left Tempe with their first loss of the season, losing to Arizona State 26-22. With starting quarterback Behren Morton not playing this game due to injury, Will Hammond was the starter, and it was hard for the offense to get anything going.
Along with offensive struggles, the defensive line continued to do great things, but with little time of possession on offense, the defense looked obviously gassed. Arizona State quarterback Sam Leavitt and Jordyn Tyson were showing why they are such a dynamic duo, and Texas Tech’s secondary struggled all afternoon.
“I thought the quarterback (Leavitt) played really well. Extended plays, you know, especially at the end of the half,” head coach Joey McGuire told Chris Level after the game. “The receiver (Tyson) was really good today, and we just couldn’t get anything going on offense… defensively, early, we held them to field goals and then, we gave up some plays off of scrambles.”
Fighting back up to a 3-point lead
Tech was down 19-7 in the 4th quarter, and was finally able to get the offense going with two touchdowns and a successful two-point conversion to go back up by three with two minutes left in the game.
“We probably scored too quick, but we hadn’t been scoring so we needed to,” McGuire said. “We had opportunities we just could not capitalize… this is a good football team. They’re the defending champs. You have a team like that, and they’re coming out to play. This was the game they had to have to stay in the hunt for the Big 12 championship and they stayed in the hunt winning today.”
McGuire’s message to the team
Even though the outcome was not what they wanted and the game plan was not executed well, the ultimate goal for the season is to get to Arlington. McGuire believes that that is still a very maintainable goal, but they have to continue moving forward and fix a lot of things to stay undefeated the rest of the regular season.
“The biggest thing is I feel like I let them down. The same thing we tell them in a win it just sucks this way and it’s a lot harder, but you just gotta come back and look at the routine and what you’ve done. You’ve gotta look at the film tomorrow and it’s not going to be fun to watch,” McGuire said. “I wanted to be 7-0, but your goal is still to get to AT&T Stadium and get in the playoffs. If you let this one game be your season, then you’ve missed the mark.”
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