Meaningful Season Finale: Win or go home for Bears, Red Raiders
You will need to look back a few years to find the last truly meaningful game to close out the regular season.
With an undefeated season on the line, No. 6 Baylor dropped a contest to No. 12 Oklahoma at McLane Stadium on Nov. 14, 2015. The games that followed the loss were indeed meaningful with bowl positioning on the line, but outside of semantics, nothing was truly on the line when the Bears fell to Texas to close the season.
It was the 2014 season when the Bears were fighting for a share of the the Big 12 Championship in a game against Kansas State. Since that December the Bears haven’t had a game mean much of anything to close out the regular season.
That won’t be the case this Saturday when the team travels to Arlington to face Texas Tech with bowl eligibility on the line. It might not sound like much when compared 2014, but a win could carry the program one step closer to where it plans to return.
“What one guy sees as excitement the other person calls pressure,” Matt Rhule said. “All of this is a tremendous opportunity. This game is the most important game because it is the next one on our schedule. At the end of the year, if we win this game it will mean no more than the other five wins if we are able to make it to a bowl game.”
Also sitting with a 5-6 record and one win away from bowl eligibility, Texas Tech joins Baylor as two of the six teams in the Big 12 with either five or six wins heading into the final weekend of the season. Like Baylor, Texas Tech holds a 2-2 record against teams that fall in that category.
“I think it shows how competitive this league is,” Rhule said. “After this week there could be a lot of six-win teams. When you play every team every year with only three non-conference games you will see less seven and four teams and more six and five teams.”
Rhule’s squared enters the final game of the regular season on a two game slide after dropping a road contest to Iowa State, 28-14, and a home finale against TCU, 16-9. They moved to 5-4 on the season with a Homecoming victory over Oklahoma State back on Nov. 3.
Like Baylor, Texas Tech enters the game on a slide of their own. Kliff Kingsbury’s team has lost four straight at Iowa State (40-31), Oklahoma (51-46), Texas (41-34) and at Kansas State (21-6). Their last victory, a 48-16 win over Kansas at home, came back on Oct. 20.
The game looms large for both programs with postseason possibilities on the line. The status of Rhule’s rebuild would be upgraded with a victory. For Kingsbury, his position at Texas Tech could possibly remain safe if he can guide his team to their sixth win.
“You wake up on Sunday and you’re either handing your cleats in or you’re trying to figure out what time meetings are on Monday,” Rhule said. “I think hopefully they want to make the most of these last days together. They’ve come a long way, but there’s still so much further to go.”
In the meeting between the two teams last season the Bears out gained the Red Raiders 523 to 337, but four turnovers, a defensive touchdown by Tech and a kickoff return for a score on the first play of the game negated the advantage.
If those things happen again Saturday and Baylor didn’t learn from their multiple unforced mistakes, they will be ones turning in their cleats on Monday.
“I don’t know why things happen the way they do, but we went to play Texas Tech last year, we turned the ball over in the red zone, we couldn’t convert on 4th-and-goal, we gave up a kickoff return for a touchdown, we gave up a defensive touchdown,” Rhule said.
“We’ll see what kind of job the coaches have done in terms of teaching them about what it takes to win these big games.”
Rhule faced nearly an exact situation in his second season at Temple in 2014. With his team’s record at 5-6, losers of five of their last six, their backs were up against the wall to become bowl eligible. The team became bowl eligible with a win on the road over Tulane on the final game of the season.
Will history repeat itself? That Temple victory over Tulane four years ago won’t have any impact on the outcome of the final regular season of 2018, but the message is still the same until the game is finished.
“If we don’t do our job on Saturday, there is no more “What’s Next” because the season is over,” Rhule said. “I want these guys to recognize that it’s just another game. Last year we went into TCU and played for pride and we are now going to fight for another win to get to a bowl game and extend this season.
“We just need to go play football and see if we can come out on the winning side and go play in a bowl game.”