LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – While the No. 12 Texas Tech Red Raiders take the field against Abilene Christian on Saturday, they can finally shake off frustrations from their 2024 matchup, which ended as a 52-51 overtime win, which left many Tech fans out-of-breath and relieved. <\/p>\n
Two years later, both teams will take the field with highly-revamped rosters of their own. In the last two seasons, Tech has turned in one of the top transfer classes in the nation (No. 1 in 2025, No. 6 in 2026), and much like the \u201924 season opener, ACU will make the 2 and \u00bd trip over to Lubbock with a Red Raider influence. <\/p>\n
The Wildcats are led by head coach Keith Patterson, who served as defensive coordinator for Matt Wells 2019-21. Tech legend Graham Harrell, who was inducted into the Texas Tech Ring of Honor last year, is now the offensive coordinator at ACU. Joel Filani, who was a wide receiver at Tech from 2004-08, now coaches the Wildcat receivers. He will also be inducted into the Texas Tech Hall of Fame later this year. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really excited about Saturday, and it\u2019s going to be fun seeing some familiar faces and one of the greatest Red Raiders of all time. Graham Harrell is one of my favorite people in the world. I love his dad (Texas high school coaching legend Sam Harrell). As you all know, he\u2019s one of my mentors and it\u2019s going to be good to see Joel and Joseph Plunk, who played for us, so I\u2019m excited that they\u2019re coming into Galaxy Stadium and I\u2019m excited to get this season started!,\u201d said Texas Tech head football coach Joey McGuire. <\/p>\n
Plunk, son of Tascosa head coach Ken Plunk, was a Tech safety from 2020-24. <\/p>\n
As for the players suiting up, that list includes defensive lineman Tanner Allen, offensive lineman Kaden Carr, defensive lineman Isiah Crawford (former Post Antelope), cornerback Deante Lindsey, defensive back Javeon Wilcox, and tight end Jayden York. <\/p>\n
Unlike most season-openers, where both teams kick off their year, Abilene Christian\u2019s season has already started. Last Saturday, the Wildcats opened the season with a 21-14 loss at Lamar. Quarterback John David Black completed 15 of 25 passes for 142 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. With 19 seconds remaining in the game, ACU had a chance to tie the game 21-21, but Black was stopped out of bounds, and the ball went over on downs on the Cardinals\u2019 4-yard-line. <\/p>\n
ACU receivers Romelo Boykin and Cristian Driver accounted for the two Wildcat scores in that game and combined for 110 yards. Tech\u2019s second-year defensive coordinator Shiel Wood says his defensive is already preparing for any upcoming challenges, especially in their passing game. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got similar skill sets, I think they both throw the ball pretty well and can run around, extend plays and scramble,\u201d he said. \u201cSo whichever one of them is in the game, I expect them to run their offense, and we\u2019ll be prepared to defend the schemes that they\u2019re going to throw at us hopefully based off of our prep.\u201d <\/p>\n
Coach McGuire knows this will be the biggest regular season game for the Wildcats, their only FBS contest this year. <\/p>\n
\u201cI expect Abilene Christian to make a big jump and play really well. I also think they were a lot like most teams in game one. You\u2019re trying to figure out exactly who you are and what you do well, and you feel like you\u2019re in a good spot against each other, but until you play somebody else, you don\u2019t know exactly what that\u2019s going to look like,\u201d he said. \u201cThey do, so they have an advantage coming into the game that they\u2019ve already played a game, but it also helps for us. We know exactly who we\u2019re playing and, we\u2019ve got some good, game film to where we\u2019re looking at what they do on defense. \u201d <\/p>\n
Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. at newly-renamed Galaxy Stadium. The game will air on FS1. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – While the No. 12 Texas Tech Red Raiders take the field against Abilene Christian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[30026,21061,30025,112154,146915,315,87297,168,170,169,1769,415,873],"class_list":["post-422163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-abilene-christian","tag-abilene-christian-university","tag-abilene-christian-wildcats","tag-acu","tag-acu-wildcats","tag-big-12","tag-fcs-football","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-texas-tech","tag-texas-tech-red-raiders","tag-texas-tech-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}