Well, this is not the reaction I anticipated to be writing about. In a season where the term “conference champion” has been thrown around for this program, this is quite the opposite of what I was expecting to see out of the gate. Not only do you lose to an inferior opponent in game 1, but you do so by pissing away a 17 point lead in the process. So many things went wrong for Texas Tech after the first quarter, that it was hard to keep up with.

In our very first possession, we were firing on all cylinders. Shough was humming the ball, receivers were making plays, and the defense was getting off the field relatively quickly. I’m not sure what happened, but a switch flipped as soon as we went into the 2nd quarter. From then on, it was all Cowboys. We could no longer move the ball, Shough threw a bad INT (almost 2 of them) across the field and Wyoming was figuring out ways to crawl themselves back in.

As frustrating as the whole night was, I don’t think anything aggravated me more than just seeing how many times we shot ourselves in the foot. Jesiah Pierre and Bralyn Lux with late hits, DL hands to the face that called back an interception, and the list goes on. While we can blame players for making questionable choices, that boils back to coaching at the end of the day. These are the kinds of actions that can get you beat, and that’s exactly what happened here.

If you add all of those issues up with the lack of literally zero offense in the 2nd half, it doesn’t typically end well. This offense went from elite to abysmal within a matter of minutes. I do not get what transpired, but there’s no way you can let that happen, especially in a road game.

The coaching staff has to get back to the drawing board and figure this out FAST, especially Kittley and the offense. There’s a real possibility we could open this season 0-2 and be reeling right out of the gate. McGuire cannot afford to do that and lose the trust of the fan base this early, in a season where he anticipated us competing for a title. While I don’t anticipate this loss defining our entire season, this one stings. REALLY stings. McGuire and Co. are gonna have to answer the bell early, or we could be in for a much rougher 2023 campaign than we all expected.