BOULDER, Colo. — Fairly early on Saturday night, John Curry was thinking of the Big 12 championship game. No, that's not to say he was dreaming or had his head in the clouds here at 5,300 feet.
What he was thinking was that Colorado pulled out all the stops trying to wobble the Texas Tech football team and where they'd seen that approach before. The Buffaloes challenged the Red Raiders with a lot of the tricky stuff they had in the playbook their first two series here at Folsom Field, and they moved right down the field.
Scored a touchdown, missed a field goal, but showed they were serious about continuing their dominance in the all-time series, one that includes a lot of ugly performances by the Red Raiders.
"Me and Ben [Roberts] were talking
about it literally right after the game," Curry said of his fellow linebacker. "We were like, man, it felt like the Big 12 championship where BYU [last year] and then Colorado both, they threw every trick play they had at us the first two drives, and it was like, 'Hey, we're fine. The fact that they have to do all this stuff in order to score on us, we're fine. We're going to settle in and we're going to get this rolling.' "
Pretty spot-on observation. BYU in last year's Big 12 title game put together a 14-play, 90-yard drive at the start, took a 7-0 lead ... and Tech won 34-7. On Saturday, Colorado ran 21 plays for 139 yards the first two times it had the ball, had a 7-3 lead and Tech won 29-7.
Tech outscored the Buffaloes 26-0 in the second half, a half in which the Red Raiders had four interceptions: two by cornerback Brice Pollock, one by safety Malik Esquerra and the last returned for a touchdown by Curry himself. I say returned for a touchdown. He didn't really return it, being in the Buffaloes' end zone when he caught it.
That's three pick-sixes in two games for Tech linebackers, and this one sent fans streaming to the exits.
"There's no better feeling than that in an away game," Curry said, "just watching the home fans leave the stands. That's when you know that you not only just won the game, but you dominated the game because they're just so defeated that they don't want to stay."
The undefeated Red Raiders are now 17-2 since the start of last season. Last year's 12 were more convincing than this year's five — Oregon State, Houston and Colorado all were in the fight in the fourth quarter. But if Tech is indeed to make it back to Arlington in December, answering a challenge such as the one the Red Raiders got Saturday ought to be beneficial. The atmosphere was charged, the crowd into it and that only intensified through the first half.
To answer the way they did takes some poise, some resolve.
Pollock's two interceptions served as redemption. Two of the big early pass plays came against him, his foul-up on one being a missed tackle.
"It was definitely a weird offense," Pollock said, "but then they kind of started doing the same thing over and over and we kind of figured it out. That go-go offense is really hard to defend. A lot of receivers in the backfield, a lot of double moves, double passes, so we just had to lock in our keys and fix the issues."
After those first two series, Tech held CU to 236 yards and no points.
The Red Raiders somewhat expected what they saw at the beginning. They knew during the week they had to play with good eye discipline.
"They were going to do a lot of reverses, a lot of gadget stuff, a lot of double passes," Esquerra said. "It's for us just doing our job, getting in the right spot, not putting our nose where it doesn't belong, like coach says."
Now the Red Raiders have an open date with plenty to ponder. The offense needed the spark from those takeaways to get going. Four times in the first half, Tech reached the Colorado 41-yard line or deeper and came away with a total of three points. Two of those promising series blew up with an inability to convert fourth-and-short.
Of Tech's 29 points, only the first field goal didn't come after a turnover. Cameron Dickey went out in the first half, with what Joey McGuire fears is a high-ankle sprain.
So, yeah, there's plenty to give one pause over the limits on this team's ceiling.
On the other hand, the Red Raiders can take satisfaction from getting out of Boulder with a win, only Tech's second in six trips to Folsom Field. I've seen as good or better Tech teams leave here with a lot worse outcomes.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech football shows fight when it had reason to founder | Williams
