Texas Tech Getting Ready to Face #2 Ranked Oklahoma State

Saturday's Texas Tech Red Raider Football match-up versus Oklahoma State is this year's Under Armour Wounded Warrior Project game.  The special uniforms Texas Tech will wear on Saturday were unveiled today.

Texas Tech Red Raider Head Coach Tommy Tuberville discussed the importance of the Wounded Warrior Project, "We're excited about this week and the Wounded Warrior game. I thought last year it was a success that we all had a chance to honor a lot of our wounded warriors here. They have an opportunity to come here and be on campus and be with our players for a couple of days, talk to our players about their experiences here at home and overseas. And I think this year it's called believe in
heroes, the game. And so we welcome an opportunity to be around some of the same guys from last year and some new wounded warriors that are here that will come and share experiences, and then also we have, I think, the most recent Medal of Honor winner will be here on campus and talking to people and coming to the game."

Tuberville also complemented Under Armour's efforts in supporting the Wounded Warrior Project, "Under Armour does a great job of this, they have several teams each year that they represent that do something for the Wounded Warrior Project. I think last year we raised quite a bit of money and hopefully we'll do the same thing this year."

He also talked about this year's Wounded Warrior uniform, "So this is the uniform we'll wear. Our
players yesterday wore them in practice, just trying to get used to them a little bit. But they're obviously all different. But I think they've outdone themselves and even looks better than last year.
So hopefully people will buy one of the jerseys or the T-shirts or whatever and most of the money goes to the Wounded Warrior Project. That's how the money is raised. So we're looking forward to that this weekend."

Coach Tuberville also talked about this week's opponent, the #2 BCS-ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys, "I just read where this is their highest ranking ever. They have a good football team. They've struggled over the years in the past and built this football team where it's at. They had a good football team last year. They've got a much better football team this year. And they've got players that can make plays, score a lot of points, and so it will be a game plan that will probably be one of the more different game plans that we'll have to make in terms of what they do and how they do it."

Tuberville also talked about the Cowboys head coach, "Mike Gundy has done an excellent job with that team, all of his coaches. And they've built it slowly, built it the right way, and, again, they've got a huge
opportunity. They know that coming in and we'll get their best shot. Probably one of the good things that's happened to us this year and one of the things that we're paying the price for each week now after last few weeks is after beating Oklahoma we get everybody's 'A' game, and we saw last week in the Texas game, I thought we knew we weren't walking into a situation that was going to be easy or overlooked."

I had the opportunity to ask Coach Tuberville his first question today, and I asked: does the inability of the Red Raider defense to force turnovers worry you? Tuberville's response, "Yeah. We haven't
forced many at all. As I said after the game Saturday, we've got to win battles on third down. You're not going to win them all. But you've got to win a few. We haven't hardly won any the last two weeks. And we haven't got any turnovers. I think we have maybe one turnover, Iowa State, about the one-yard line. I remember them fumbling down there, and we happened to get that fumble. All year long that has been a problem for us, causing fumbles, and luckily we haven't been that big a team in terms of turnovers in most games.  And we're not good enough to not get turnovers, just at least one or two, and then have -- make the other team punt, basically, get the team off the field."

Steve Dale asked Coach Tubs, how do you defend against Oklahoma State's potent offense? "Nobody has. I mean, what you gotta do is you've got to come up with a plan formation-wise in terms of what they have in the game. You've got to take your chances in terms of when you're going to -- what receiver you're going to take out in terms of doubling whether it's Blackmon or whether it's No. 82 (Isaiah Anderson), I don't know his name, but they spread it around.

"Their quarterback (Brandon Weeden) very seldom gets touched. He's tall, big. He gets it, he's accurate. And that's the reason they're 9-0. They know what they're doing with the ball, and they keep their defense out of a bind. They don't turn it over a lot. Very few turnovers. So their defense usually has a lot of feel behind them to play defense. So, again, a good team. It's a team that's going to come in here -- I thought we played pretty well other than about five or six plays, but we're a different team and they're a different team."

Texas Tech vs. Oklahoma State will kick off from Jones AT&T Stadium Saturday at 11a on ABC television.  Countdown to Kickoff with Steve Dale gets underway at 8a Saturday morning.