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Texas Tech quarterback Will Hammond drops back to throw the ball against Houston during the first half of an NCAA college football game Friday, Sept. 18, 2026, in Lubbock, Texas. (AP Photo\/Justin Rex)<\/p>\n
Justin Rex\/AP Photo\/Justin Rex<\/p>\n
LUBBOCK \u2014 It was highly debated this week across the college football landscape whether No. 13 Texas Tech could pull out a victory over No. 22 Houston on Friday at Galaxy Stadium in Lubbock.
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And Friday\u2019s contest came down to the wire, with the Red Raiders holding on 28-26. Houston quarterback\u00a0Conner Weigman delivered a 10-yard touchdown to Patrick Overmyer to pull the Cougars within two points with under a minute to go, but Houston came up inches short of tying the game on the ensuing 2-point conversion attempt\u00a0on\u00a0Weigman\u2019s lunging attempt to reach the ball to the goal line.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Following Tech\u2019s first AP Top-25 victory of the season, head coach Joey McGuire encouraged the Red Raiders\u2019 doubters to continue fueling his program\u2019s fire to win. He even mentioned several college football media personalities who picked against Tech earlier in the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to thank Josh Pate,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cKeep it up, Pate. He\u2019s my buddy and everything but keep picking against us man. I appreciate that he\u2019s watched us the last couple weeks and [said] we don\u2019t look the same. We don\u2019t look the same, but we\u2019re 3-0.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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McGuire\u2019s team started the game with a 10-0 deficit but\u00a0didn\u2019t let the Cougars\u2019 fast start hinder their morale, fighting back to only be down 17-14 at the half.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Houston\u2019s halftime lead would be their last, as Tech came out of halftime and punched in a 29-yard rushing touchdown from J\u2019Koby Williams on the opening drive. The Red Raiders scored one more touchdown in the second half before coming away victorious.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McGuire said President and CEO of the UFC, Dana White, paid the Red Raiders a visit on Thursday prior to facing the Cougars due to Power Slap 23 being held at the United Supermarkets Arena the same night. He said White\u2019s message sparked the team to embrace the role of being disbelieved in.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love being doubted,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cDana White said to the team, \u2018There\u2019s nothing better than being doubted.\u2019 I\u2019m not going to quote exactly what he said because I\u2019ll get in trouble, but there\u2019s nothing like being doubted and coming back and winning a football game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tech quarterback Will Hammond has also been doubted, with some debating whether he should be starting. The Austin native finished with 257 passing yards on 17-of-27 passing with a touchdown and an interception.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Hammond started to find a groove at the end of the first half, even delivering a 35-yard strike to Kenny Johnson down the sideline in the right side of the end zone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve said it from the time that we\u2019ve started going through everything we\u2019re going through that we\u2019re so lucky to have Will Hammond,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cAll he cares about is winning. I think some of it really drives him. Little fiery redhead that wants to prove me wrong a little bit, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
A position controversy can be\u00a0 hard as players are trying to prove themselves on a weekly basis. McGuire said Hammond’s only focus is coming away week in and week out with a victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best thing about this team is everyone is always ready,\u201d Hammond said. \u201cWe always have that next-up mentality. I always tell the young guys: be ready for your opportunity. Whether I got the first play or not, we won the game and that\u2019s all that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGuire said getting on the same page as a team in all facets is still a work-in-progress, but he believes it will build throughout the season as the team continues to progress.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cI do still truly believe we\u2019re trying to find ourselves,\u201d McGuire said. \u201cGetting a quarterback to have confidence in himself and play like he played tonight, that’s still a work-in-progress. And the more he just gets snaps under his belt, and the more we play together, then we’re just going to keep getting better as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tech\u2019s next matchup will come against Sam Houston at 11 a.m. Sept. 26 at Galaxy Stadium in Lubbock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Tech quarterback Will Hammond drops back to throw the ball against Houston during the first half of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[168,170,169,96496,144221,88145],"class_list":["post-440811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-sports-texas-tech-red-raiders","tag-tp-college-football","tag-tp-colleges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440811","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=440811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}