No. 8 Texas Tech heads to Cincinnati on Saturday morning with plenty on the line in the larger sense of its season, but the immediate job is simple: walk into a difficult road setting and keep the winning streak alive.
The Red Raiders are 6-0 overall and 3-0 in the Big 12, riding an 11-game regular season winning streak into their matchup with the Bearcats, who sit at 4-2 and 1-2. Joey McGuire is preparing his team for the kind of atmosphere that tends to expose mistakes fast.
One area that should tell the story is the trench battle. Cincinnati brings one of the nation’s better rushing attacks, led by Gi’Bran Payne and Cole Tabb, and the Bearcats rank 11th in the country with 234 yards on the ground. Texas Tech, meanwhile, has been the lone FBS team in week eight that has not given up a rushing touchdown.
“When you can rush the football in a game, I think for 150+ yards, you’ve got a great advantage of winning that game. You can control the clock, you can shorten the game,” McGuire said.
“I think they’re really good in the offensive line. There’s three of them that have NFL grades going into the season, so they’re really good up front.
It’s going to be a great test, and they have a veteran quarterback (JC French IV). I think he’s a fifth-year guy, and man he operates their offense and what they want to do, so we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
French has been efficient and dangerous in multiple ways. He has completed 108 of 153 passes for 1,338 yards, nine touchdowns and no interceptions, while also adding 66 carries for 245 yards and six scores on the ground.
“(He’s had) no interceptions, I think he’s fumbled the ball twice, He’s got the ability to extend plays. They don’t drop back to throw it a lot on first, second down, so it’s a lot of run, play action, bootlegs so they do a nice job,” said Tech’s defensive coordinator Shiel Wood. “On early downs, they protect the ball by If they’re going to drop back to throw it, they get the ball out really quick.”
Tech’s defense is also carrying a unique run of its own through the “Pick Six Club,” with linebackers John Curry, Ben Roberts, and Austin Romaine all having returned interceptions for touchdowns in the Red Raiders’ last three games. Roberts joined that group most recently, and his “Pick Six” last Saturday against Arizona State helped set the tone in Texas Tech’s 53-25 Homecoming win.
That game also featured a season-high six sacks from the Red Raiders, who now have 17 on the year and will try to build on that number again in Cincinnati.
On offense, Will Hammond is coming off his strongest outing of the season. He completed 18 of 26 passes for a touchdown last week and also scored on a nine-yard run in the first quarter, pushing Tech to a 14-0 lead.
His teammates have pointed to the bye week as a key reason for that jump, saying the work and adjustments from the break showed up in his performance.
Texas Tech will again be without Cameron Dickey, who remains out while dealing with a high ankle sprain suffered in the team’s 29-7 win at Colorado. In his place, J’Koby Williams and Quentin Joyner continue to handle the workload, and Williams made the most of it last week by rushing for 161 yards and two touchdowns, including scores from 62 and 38 yards out.
Saturday also carries a quieter offseason thread between the two programs. Former Cincinnati quarterback Brendan Sorsby transferred to Texas Tech with plans to run the offense, later entered treatment for gambling addiction, was initially ruled ineligible by the NCAA, and then received a temporary injunction from a judge in Lubbock County’s 99 th District Court that allowed him to play. After that, Sorsby left for the NFL supplemental draft before the league declined to hold one.
McGuire said Monday he planned to keep his team locked in on the present rather than the noise around that backdrop, especially with college football already proving unpredictable through the first half of the season.
The matchup kicks off at 11 a.m. CT at Nippert Stadium and will air on FS1. It will be Texas Tech’s first-ever trip to the Queen City.
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For a team trying to sort out its identity, the game served as a reminder that the interior can look very different without those frontcourt pieces available. The Red Raiders still got a useful look against high-level competition, but the issues were hard to miss, especially when Kentuckys physical edge kept tilting the matchup its way. How quickly Texas Tech can stabilize those areas will shape a lot of what comes next. [Read more 🡒]