Horns Stay in the BCS Mix With Baylor Win

What’s a little loss between friends? Sure the Red Raiders are No. 2 in the BCS standings, but the voters were kind enough to leave Texas in the third spot and salivating. A rematch? If Texas Tech can get past Oklahoma in two weeks and then Missouri in the Big 12 Championship, it’s a real possibility. First someone has to knock Alabama off. And Texas has to get past Kansas this weekend.

That may be no easy task with the war of Horn attrition (can you say Adam Ulitoski?) continuing after a convincing 45-21 pounding of a better-than-they-used-to-be Baylor team led by QB Robert Griffin, who is yet another Big 12 quarterback with a hot arm and great feet. You can’t say Texas won’t be prepared for Kansas’ Todd Reesing, who is one more hot arm in the mix. But what may have been most interesting in the Baylor game was the fourth quarter when the backups took over and ran the ball — at least in short bursts — at will. Why not more running, Mack? I like Fozzy Whittaker, who led the ground game with 77 yards.

Perhaps the answer is Colt McCoy threw for 300 yards, completing 26 of 37 passes, and Quan Cosby has seemingly recovered from that bad back, nabbing eight of those for 111 yards and two touchdowns. The Horns had 30 first downs to the Bears’ nine on a day when Baylor mostly refused to punt on fourth down (Texas stopped three of those fourth-down attempts).

If Texas is to do against Kansas what it did against Baylor, the Horns will have to stop the explosive plays. Baylor had five big plays that accounted for 229 yards of offense. The Bears got 43 yards on the other 44 plays, Coach Brown said at his weekly press conference. That may be tough to repeat against Reesing, a Lake Travis product who is coming off a heartbreaking 45-35 loss to Nebraska this past Saturday with some bumps and bruises. A loss to lowly Nebraska? Don’t get overconfident, Horns. Kansas is 5-0 at home this season and Reesing is 10th in the country in total offense. “He stays on the move, so he’s hard to sack,” Brown says of Reesing. “He can make plays you just wouldn’t believe he could make. He’s the reason they are winning.”

And in case you’re counting, the latest Heisman favorites according to the Rocky Mountain News: Tech’s Graham Harrell first, McCoy second, OU’s Sam Bradford third, early season fave Tim Tebow of Florida at four, and the guy who really truly should win it, Tech’s Michael Crabtree running fifth. With that Big 12 domination, a Horn-Red Raider rematch isn’t so far-fetched.