Road test at Baylor awaits Red Raiders next

TEXAS TECH at BAYLOR
Waco, Texas | McLane Stadium
Oct. 7, 2023
ESPN2 | 7 p.m. CT

GAME LINKS

LUBBOCK, Texas – Texas Tech looks to build off its first Big 12 victory of the season this Saturday when returning to the road to face Baylor at McLane Stadium in a 7 p.m. primetime kickoff. The Red Raiders will be searching for their first win away from home this season in the matchup, all while trying to get back to .500 for the season overall and above .500 in the Big 12 standings against a Baylor team that has won four of the last five meetings.

Television coverage will be provided by ESPN2 with Brian Custer behind the mic providing the play-by-play. He will be joined by Rod Gilmore in the booth providing analysis while Lauren Sisler will be reporting from the sideline. The broadcast can be accessed from any desktop or laptop computer, a personal cellular device and television streaming services using the ESPN app.

Texas Tech Sports Network will also broadcast the game over 46 affiliates throughout the state of Texas and New Mexico as Brian Jensen will have the call alongside analyst John Harris and sideline reporter Chris Level. The radio broadcast can also be heard on SiriusXM channel 390, as well as on the Varsity app.

GROUND GAME PROVING TO BE A STRENGTH

Texas Tech, historically known for boasting one of the top passing offenses, is making a name for itself as a running team this season as the Red Raiders are averaging 177.4 yards per game on the ground thanks in part to Tahj Brooks, who has hit the 100-yard mark each of the past three weeks.
Texas Tech rushed for 239 yards and three touchdowns as a team versus Houston as Brooks and Cam'Ron Valdez became only the third pair of Red Raiders to each record a 100-yard rushing performance in a game in school history.

RED RAIDERS SPECIAL ON SPECIAL TEAMS

Blocked kicks. Kick returns for a touchdown. The best punter in the country. The Red Raiders have displayed it all through the first month of the season.
Texas Tech is coming off one of its best special teams outings in recent memory as Drae McCray returned a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown, Loic Fouonji blocked a punt, recovered it and scored, and Austin McNamara booted a season-long 59-yard punt - all against Houston.
The contest marked the first time Texas Tech scored two special teams touchdowns in the same game dating back to 1971.

SOME PERSPECTIVE THROUGH SEPTEMBER

While no one associated with Texas Tech likely thought the Red Raiders would be looking at a 2-3 start this season, those three losses aren't looking as bad as some originally thought. The three schools Texas Tech has lost to this season - Wyoming (4-1), Oregon (5-0) and West Virginia (4-1) - are a combined 13-2 overall this season with the two losses coming to teams currently ranked in the top 10 of both polls.
West Virginia's lone loss came in its season opener to a Penn State program that is ranked No. 6 in the country in both polls. Wyoming, meanwhile, dropped its lone loss to a Texas team that is ranked as high as No. 3 nationally despite entering the fourth quarter tied. Oregon remains undefeated at 5-0 this season to rank as high as No. 8 in the country.

TEXAS TECH-BAYLOR CONNECTIONS

Saturday's contest will mark the second for Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire against his former school, Baylor. The Bears represented McGuire's first position at the collegiate level as he served in a variety of roles at Baylor, coaching the tight ends from 2017-18, the defensive ends in 2019 and then the outside linebackers in 2020-21. He was promoted to associate head coach before the 2019 season. His son, Garret McGuire (now an assistant coach at Nebraska), was a quarterback for Baylor from 2017-20.
Following his hire at Texas Tech, McGuire formed a staff full of connections to Baylor as 13 coaches or support staff members are either Baylor graduates or previously worked for the Bears at one point. That list consists of inside linebackers coach Josh Bookbinder (Baylor '09, student assistant 2007-08, defensive quality control 2019-21), tight ends coach Josh Cochran (graduate assistant 2017-18, quality control 2019), head strength and conditioning coach Lance Barilow (senior associate director of athletics performance 2021), director of player personnel James Blanchard (Assistant A.D. for scouting 2019 and 2021), director of football operations Quintin Jordan (director of football operations 2019-21), director of scouting Brian Nance (three-year letterwinner 2014-15, 2017; associate director of player personnel 2019-21), offensive analyst Kirk Bryant (graduate assistant 2017-18, quality control assistant 2019-20), operations and recruiting assistant Harrison Hanna (associate director of equipment services 2018-21), James Lockhart (two-year letterwinner 2018-19, graduate assistant 2021), post-grad recruiting intern Jake Pittman (Baylor '22) and head football dietitian Hannah Petersen (Baylor '20, nutrition assistant 2020).
McGuire added two more members to his staff with Baylor ties this offseason in assistant head coach and offensive passing game coordinator Justin Johnson, who spent the previous three seasons (2020-22) as the Bears' running backs coach, as well as defensive graduate assistant Cole Maxwell, a 2022 alumnus of the university. Johnson and McGuire's tenures crossed paths for roughly two seasons (2020-21), while Maxwell started in 19 games along the defensive line for the Bears where he played under McGuire.
Bookbinder, in particular, has significant ties to the Bears as he is the grandson of legendary Baylor head coach, Grant Teaff, who remains the school's all-time winningest head coach after compiling a 128-105-6 record over 21 seasons from 1972-92. Bookbinder was previously on the Baylor staff before joining McGuire with the Red Raiders as he was a defensive quality control assistant from 2019-21.
Baylor head coach Dave Aranda has experience on the Texas Tech sidelines, meanwhile, as he was a graduate assistant for the Red Raider defense from 2000-02, the first three seasons under the late Mike Leach. He earned his master's degree in interdisciplinary studies from the university in 2002 before accepting the linebackers coach position at Houston for the 2003-04 seasons.

INSIDE THE BAYLOR SERIES

Texas Tech and Baylor will meet for the 82nd time this weekend in a back-and-forth series that Baylor now narrowly leads at 41-39-1 all-time entering this weekend. Baylor has won three of the last four games since the series moved back to campus sites in 2019. Texas Tech is 6-2 against the Bears in Waco as Big 12 members with both losses coming in each of its last two visits to McLane Stadium.
Texas Tech and Baylor boast one of the longest-running series in the Big 12 as the two schools have met annually since 1956 dating back to their time in the Southwest Conference. Baylor controlled a 19-17 advantage over the Red Raiders during their SWC tenure but immediately lost its next 15 games in the series upon entering the Big 12 in 1996.
The two schools are in their fourth year of returning the series back to campus sites after playing the previous 10 meetings in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex (2009-18). The Red Raiders were only 4-6 against the Bears during that span but are 18-9 throughout the Big 12 era.
This will be the first time Texas Tech has played a night game in Waco since 1999 when the Red Raiders defeated the Bears, 35-7, at their previous home in Floyd Casey Stadium. Sammy Morris, a current member of the Texas Tech staff, rushed for 98 yards and a touchdown, while Kevin Curtis, now a member of the Baylor staff, led Texas Tech with 13 tackles, including 2.0 for a loss, to go with a key interception he returned back to the one-yard line early in the second quarter.
The Red Raiders had won 10-consecutive games against the Bears in Lubbock until Baylor spoiled the Ring of Honor ceremonies for Patrick Mahomes II with a 45-17 victory a year ago. It marked the lone home loss during Joey McGuire's debut season as head coach as Texas Tech finished 6-1 at home in front of its home crowd. The loss was also the first to Baylor at home since Sept. 29, 1990, when the Bears escaped Lubbock with a 21-15 victory early in the season.

TICKETS GOING, GOING, GONE

For months, Joey McGuire encouraged Red Raider fans to purchase their season tickets before it'd be too late. That time officially came in early August when Texas Tech announced it had officially sold out of season tickets for the 2023 campaign. In total, Texas Tech sold 31,649 season tickets for this season, which includes 6,511 new season tickets after an impressive debut for the Red Raiders under McGuire and his staff.
Once the season ticket allotment sold out, single-game tickets became an even hotter commodity as the athletics department quickly sold out single-game tickets to the first four home games making the TCU (11/2) and UCF (11/18) contests the only two that remain an option to purchase tickets for in 2023.
Texas Tech's capacity has been set for 56,200 for the 2023 season due to the ongoing construction on the south end zone portion of Jones AT&T Stadium.
Over his two seasons as head coach, Texas Tech has added more than 13,000 season tickets since McGuire's hiring in November 2021. Texas Tech previously sold 28,000 season tickets for McGuire's debut season in 2022, which, like this year's total, ranks among the top-10 highest season ticket counts in program history.

Road test at Baylor awaits Red Raiders next

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Players Mentioned

Tahj Brooks

Loic Fouonji

Drae McCray

Austin McNamara

Cam'Ron Valdez

Texas Tech University Athletics

Road test at Baylor awaits Red Raiders next

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