The Houston Cougars don’t play in the Big 12 Conference South Division. If they did, they’d be calling themselves contenders for the Big 12 championship game.
UH quarterback Case Keenum led a late 16-play drive, then capped it himself with a 4-yard touchdown run as No. 17 Houston beat Texas Tech 29-28 Saturday night, the Cougars’ second big win in a row over a Big 12 South team.
“I thought both teams played really hard,’’ Tech coach Mike Leach said. “I thought both teams slugged it out. What Houston did better than we did was play key situations.’’
No situation was more critical than Houston taking over at its own 5-yard line after a punt, down 28-23 with 5:47 left. To that point, the Cougars had mounted several lengthy drives, having to settle for field goals three times.
This time, they weren’t going to be denied.
Houston maneuvered 95 yards in just under five minutes, taking the lead when the slippery Keenum ran in a quarterback draw with 49 seconds left. The crowd showed up early at Robertson Stadium and swarmed the grass field moments later when time expired.
There were 32,114 on hand, the most since UH returned to playing full-time on campus in 1998.
“It was the loudest I’ve ever heard that place,’’ said Keenum, who had 435 yards on 38-for-58 passing. “Tech had a lot of fans out there, too. It was just a great atmosphere.’’
Those fans – and the Cougars – had had a week off to collect themselves and build back up after Houston upset then-No. 5 Oklahoma State 45-35 on Sept. 12 in Stillwater, Okla. They got to celebrate a second straight pulsating victory, while Tech had to digest its second tough road loss in a row.
“The last two games we played are extremely good teams on the road,’’ Leach said, “and Houston was off the week before, so it certainly helped their preparation and (helped them) physically. But it was there for us. It was there for us. We had our chances. They made more of theirs than we made of ours.’’
Houston (3-0) converted two third downs and a fourth down on the winning drive as Tech (2-2) wore down in the heat. On third-and-4 from the Houston 11, Keenum found split end Patrick Edwards for 7 yards. On third-and-10 from his 34, he kept for 10. But the backbreaker came on fourth-and-3 from Tech 49.
Keenum bought time running to his left, waiting for Edwards to come open late before he delivered on target for 7 yards.
“We were just trying to focus on getting the stop and getting off the field,’’ said cornerback LaRon Moore, who gave up the fourth-down pass. “It was kind of hard, because we didn’t have any timeouts. We were trying to dig down. We got them in a situation we wanted, but the quarterback scrambled and made a play.’’
A 23-yard pass from Keenum to inside receiver Tyron Carrier moved the ball to the Tech 7 as the clock ticked toward the one-minute mark. The Cougars went for two after the touchdown, and Tech cornerback Jamar Wall intercepted.
After the kickoff, Tech crossed midfield to the Houston 43 with the help of a couple of Taylor Potts passes to Alex Torres. But instead of a 60-yard field goal, the Raiders opted for a hail mary pass that was knocked down.
Keenum, a junior, had his sixth career 400-yard passing night, but it looked as if it might be in vain when Tech nickel back Will Ford intercepted him with 7:12 left. But the Raiders couldn’t run out the clock, leaving Keenum one more chance.
For Tech, that was one chance too many.
“None of us panicked,’’ UH coach Kevin Sumlin said. “I’ve been around him long enough to know he was upset after the interception, but I told him, ‘We’re going to have an opportunity to win the game.’ I said, ‘It’s going to be a lot more interesting to win,’ with seven minutes left. We have great confidence in him and the people around him.’’
Houston’s 97th-ranked rushing defense proved to be just what Tech needed to awaken its slumbering rush offense that had averaged less than 29 yards in the first three weeks of the season. Baron Batch ran for two touchdowns in his first career 100-yard rushing night, knocking a couple of Cougar helmets off along the way.
Harrison Jeffers, a non-factor last week because Leach worried about his pass-protection ability against Texas’ talented front, added another touchdown on a 13-yard run.
Potts got away with a couple of ill-advised passes, but his 24-yard touchdown strike to Tramain Swindall was good for a 28-20 lead with 4:19 left in the third quarter.
Tech had a chance to all but put the game away with 11 minutes left, but the Raiders’ inability to score from close range – a sore spot this season – reared its head again. Potts was stonewalled trying a sneak on fourth-and-goal from the 1.
Actually, he was stonewalled and then Batch and Jeffers shoved him over the goal line. But line judge Walt Coleman signaled emphatically that Potts’ forward progress was stopped before the help came in.
“In hindsight, we should have kicked it, which was a fairly big botch on my part,’’ Leach said.
Tech was up 28-23 at the time. Leach said the sneak was his call, not a play Potts checked into.
“If the field goal team’s out there at that point in the game, that’s a better thing to do, and I didn’t do it,’’ Leach said.
Keenum terrorized Tech with a mixture of mid-range and deep passes to his wide receivers and dump-offs to his running backs. Freshman running back Charles Sims caught 10 passes for 122 yards. Carrier caught eight passes for 99 yards. James Cleveland and Edwards each nearly made it to 100 receiving yards on eight and seven catches, respectively.
In a lot of instances, Tech forced UH into field goals – Jordan Mannisto attempted five and missed two.
But there was none of that on the drive that mattered. Leach said he thought both teams were worn down, but linebacker Bront Bird didn’t buy the alibi.
“I’m not going to blame anything on humidity or anything,’’ Bird said. “We had a couple of guys cramping up. But we should have won this game and we didn’t, so we’ve got to live with it.’’
Story courtesy of Don Williams at www.redraiders.com
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