Oklahoma needs to come through at home
The no. 16 Oklahoma Sooners are at home on Saturday 13 November, in the fine comforts of Memorial Stadium, against a Texas Tech Red Raiders team that had a surprising victory last week against no. 12 Missouri. The Sooners on the other hand can ill afford another
loss like the one they had last weekend against an unranked Texas A&M team, which came into the rankings this week at no. 25.
Texas Tech’s season to date
The Red Raiders opened their season with two wins and a combined point total of 87. The only downfall was that the defence was not there, allowing 44 points in the first two games. The team followed that up with back to back losses, one against the
Texas Longhorns and the other against the Iowa State Cyclones. They came back with an offensive explosion against the Baylor Bears and were victorious, 45-38. Since the Baylor game, the Red Raiders have lost two of four. Only one of those losses came against
a ranked opponent, and that was the surging Oklahoma State Cowboys, but then Texas Tech showed up and beat no. 12 Missouri. It will be a mystery which team shows up on Saturday.
Oklahoma’s previous games
This team hates playing on the road. In their last two away from home, they suffered losses to Missouri and Texas A&M. Missouri was their first loss of the season, and the Sooners were sitting pretty at 6-0 before the Tigers got their claws into
them. After the win at Colorado two weeks ago, it was last week’s loss to A&M that has Sooner faithful worried about their team.
"It's real simple, we play better," Sooner head coach Bob Stoops said to espn.go.com. "And on the road we need to play better. Now a lot goes into that but it isn't like we're sitting here and just naively walking onto the field. We have methods in how we
prepare and get ready and have meetings and practice and all of those."
Keys to the game
It is all about passing in Oklahoma’s offence. The sophomore quarterback Landry Jones has been attacking the secondaries of opponents, accumulating 2837 yards on 263 completions. He has also not thrown less than 217 yards in any game this season,
reaching over 300 yards in five games, with a whopping 453 yards against Colorado. However, this makes their offence easy to read without a significant running threat. Their most effective running back is DeMarco Murray, who is only averaging 4.2 yards per
carry.
Texas Tech is another pass happy team, having a national ranking of eighth to the Sooners sixth. Once again, they need to add another level to this offence, and that might be with running back Baron Batch who is coming off his best game of the season where
he reached a season high for attempts with 28 and yards gained, with 134.
The running game will play a key part in both team’s offence this weekend, so it will come down to who is more accurate in the quarterbacks position. Both of the Red Raiders pivots are throwing for over 57% accuracy and have over 2700 combined yards.
Prediction
The point spread on the game right now is Oklahoma -15. Way too many points, so take Texas Tech with the point spread.
If you want it straight up, Oklahoma needs the win a lot more than Texas Tech, so desperation will certainly come into play if the game is tied in the fourth quarter.
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