Texas Tech Football Head Coach Tommy Tuberville Talks About the Loss to Texas A&M and Saturday’s Game Against Kansas State

Texas Tech Red Raider Football Head Coach Tommy Tuberville addressed the media this afternoon following Texas Tech's 45-40 loss to Texas A&M.

This week's game will be Saturday at Jones AT&T Stadium against Kansas State with a 6 o'clock kickoff.  The game will be televised on FSN.

Coach Tuberville talked about what led to the Red Raiders loss to A&M, "In close games like this, just one small thing can cost you a game. And these next seven games we've got coming up are the same situation. I don't look at a lot of stats, but one thing I do look at is possessions. If you look at Saturday night we had 13 possessions. We had four touchdowns. We had five field goal attempts. And we had four punts and no turnovers. We've got to do better than that on offense. When you can only get four touchdowns out of 13 possessions, the way we play, you're not going to win a lot of games."

Tubs also talked about Tech's 3rd down conversions, "We had 50 percent, 12 out of 24 third down conversions. That's good enough. But probably not good enough against a team that is as talented as who we played against."

The first question asked, what is the status of running back Eric Stephens, who was carted off of the field against the Aggies? "Not good. It's a knee. I don't know what all damage. There's lots of damage. But we won't know until today, they let the swelling go down and do the MRIs and all that. But it's not good."

The running back position will be running back by-committee with Stephens out.  Senior Aaron Crawford and freshman DeAndre Washington and Kenny Williams will all split time in the Red Raider backfield.

Tuberville was also asked about the status of WR Darrin Moore who didn't play Saturday against the Aggies, "Yeah, well, we were planning on playing him on goal line situations. We weren't down there enough in terms of getting the ball to him. But I'd say right now he's probably 90, 95 percent. And he'll get better as the week goes on. So we'll see." Tuberville was also pleased with the play Alex Torres in place of Moore, "Torres did awful well. I'm not going to put somebody in there that's three-quarters speed when you've got a guy like Alex Torres that can catch the ball. I'm not going to do that."

I asked Coach Tuberville if there will be more offensive sets featuring tight ends, after TE Adam James caught 4 passes against Texas A&M, "Yeah. I thought Adam James played a great game the other night. It was a situation where he was playing so good we didn't play Jace Amaro. But each week we'll have different sets in terms of how we get the ball to the tight ends and how we use them blocking. That's going to be a big part of our offense. We're just not that far along yet. And there's situations where we have held a few things back to where we thought -- we think it will work against some of the teams that we'll face better than some of the teams we've already faced."

Tuberville continued, "So that's how our offense works each week. We've already pre-scouted everybody we're playing through the offseason and their defenses, offensively, and what we want to run and don't want to run and kind of hold back for certain situations. So tight end is going to be a big part of our offense. And it's getting better and better."

As far as this week's game against Kansas State, Tuberville was asked about stopping Kansas State's mobile quarterback, Collin Klein, and their offense, "He's (Klein) deceiving. Big guy. Runs. He'll run it. He'll run quarterback draws. Sweeps. He runs the option play."

Tuberville elaborated on the rest of the K-State offense, "They've got a couple of running backs or scat backs that are very deceiving. They can find cracks and it's hard to find them. Big, huge offensive line. Big tight ends. And they'll lull you to sleep, then throw you a post route and the quarterback he'll be on the money. So it's, like I said, it's a team that Coach Snyder's put together that's very disciplined. Very coordinated. They know what they want to do."

Finally, Coach Tuberville took a few minutes to talk about the addition of TCU to the Big 12 Conference, "It's going to be a natural rival for us. We'll play them the last weekend. They'll take A&M's place next year. We'll go there and they'll be -- I'm sure the schedules will pretty much stay the same and we'll fit -- they'll fit into that slot for us and I think it's a good addition. It's going to make it more difficult, obviously, for us to go and recruit in the Dallas Metroplex area, but that's football."

Tubs also talked about TCU's current head coach, "Gary Patterson is a good friend. He's done a great job, speaking of coaches that have done a great job at a school. Gone in there in the last 10, 12 years and turned that program into not just a winner but a national contender. So that will bring a lot to the Big 12."