No. 9 Texas Tech playing 1st game as top 10 team since 2013 in Big 12 home opener against Kansas

By Canadian Press on October 9, 2025.

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — Texas Tech is getting ready to play its first game as an AP top 10 team since 2013, and yet coach Joey McGuire doesn’t believe the ninth-ranked Red Raiders have played to their full potential while starting undefeated in likely the most-hyped season in school history.

The Red Raiders (5-0, 2-0 Big 12) have scored a lot of points, and not given up many, but are the league’s most penalized team going into Saturday night’s game against Kansas (4-2, 2-1). They reach the midpoint of the regular season with their conference home opener.

“A lot of it is self-inflicted wounds,” McGuire said. “I think we’ve got a lot more left in us. We’ve just got to clean that stuff up and become more disciplined. … It’s a mixture of things that we’ve got to situationally do better.”

Despite being penalized more than 76 yards per game, Texas Tech is second among FBS teams averaging 48.6 points a game, and fourth giving up only 11.2 points per game.

The Red Raiders are the first Big 12 team since Baylor in 2015 to start a season 5-0 with an average winning margin of at least 37 points a game. Their closest games were 24-point wins on the road to start Big 12 play, at Utah (34-10) and then Houston (35-11) last week.

“Those games were close or are somewhat close from the standpoint of not opening up the game,” McGuire said. “I felt like we should have scored 60 (points) the other night, and I know everybody else does.”

The Red Raiders are also top 10 nationally in total offense (568.8 yards per game) and total defense (244.4). They are the only one of the nation’s 15 undefeated teams to win all of their games by at least 20 points.

“That just says coach McGuire has a really good football team,” Kansas coach Lance Leipold said. “An extremely explosive football team, an excellent team with lots of talent and depth. … Most of their games have been decided early, and again, they have a lot of weapons.”

The quarterbacks

Dual-threat quarterback Jalon Daniels, now in his sixth season at Kansas, is 103-of-153 passing (67.3%) for 1,497 yards. His 16 touchdown passes rank second nationally, and in the Big 12, behind Baylor’s Sawyer with 19.

Daniels is fourth in the Big 12 with 289.3 total yards per game (249.5 yards passing, 39.8 rushing). That is just ahead of Texas Tech’s Behren Morton at 281.6 total yards per game, all of his passing. Morton has minus 2 yards rushing this season, but has completed 97 of 140 passes (69.3%) for 1,410 yards and 12 TDs.

On the road and against ranked

Kansas had lost 52 conference road games in a row since 2009 before Leipold’s arrival in 2021.

The Jayhawks have six Big 12 road wins under Leipold, including 17-13 at then-No. 7 BYU last November. Their first road win over a top 10 team since 1995 was the middle of three games in a row facing Top 25 opponents. They won them all, becoming the first NCAA team ever with such a three-game winning streak while having a losing record. This is their first ranked opponent this season.

Lopsided ledger

Texas Tech holds a 23-2 series advantage. That includes an 11-1 margin in Lubbock, where the Jayhawks have lost eight in a row since a 34-31 overtime win in 2001. The other Kansas win was 37-34 in Lawrence in 2019.

Throw those tortillas (once)

Big 12 athletic directors in a 15-1 vote before the season approved a policy to discipline home teams for fans throwing items on the field.

With the longstanding tradition by Texas Tech fans of throwing tortillas at the opening kickoff and after each scoring drive, Tech AD Kirby Hocutt was the lone dissenting vote.

While the Red Raiders haven’t yet been assessed any 15-yard penalties for flying tortillas, McGuire this week asked fans to only throw them after the opening kickoff.

“I really need you guys to understand that it’s not about throwing tortillas,” he said. “Let’s get it out of the way, right off the bat. … It’s not about us being defiant of the rule in place.”

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The Associated Press