Challenges lie ahead for Tech

By beating Baylor on Saturday, Texas Tech guaranteed that it will finish the regular season at .500 or better for the 14th year in a row, but it might be a good thing the Red Raiders got that out of the way when they did.

There are no guarantees from here on.

Tech (6-4) finishes the regular season the next two Saturdays with a road game at No. 17 Oklahoma and a home game against Oklahoma State, both of which have winning records. The Raiders, who play OU at 6 p.m. Saturday, haven't won in Norman since 1996 - when Byron Hanspard and the running game were key to Tech's offense.

"It's going to be a huge game next week,'' Tech flanker Joel Filani said after the team's 55-21 conquest of Baylor. "OU's a great team. It'll be a good challenge for us to see where we're at and try to get a win up there.''

The game time and television coverage for Tech-OU were finalized Sunday. FSN (Suddenlink cable channel 20) will carry the game.

Texas Tech at Oklahoma Oklahoma (7-2 season, 4-1 in the Big 12 Conference) is coming off a 17-16 road win at Texas A&M that kept the Sooners one game behind front-running Texas in the loss column in the Big 12 South Division.

Oklahoma State (5-4, 2-3) upset Tech 24-17 last year and looks like a more dangerous team on offense this year. Sophomore quarterback Bobby Reid, once a blue-chip recruit who was courted by Ohio State among others, has come along after an injury-plagued freshman season, and wide receiver Adarius Bowman is one of 14 semifinalists for the Biletnikoff Award.

Tech would qualify for a bowl game even if it finished 6-6. The destination is unlikely to be as marquee as the last two years, when the Raiders went to the Holiday and Cotton bowls.

Officials from the Insight Bowl in Tempe, Ariz. and the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La., were on hand for the Tech-Baylor game.

"For me, it's my last go-round, so I'm definitely excited about the bowl,'' said Filani, a senior. "We still have a couple of games left, so we're trying to get these wins. It's always nice to know you're in a bowl.''

Unless Bowl Championship Series games take two teams from the Big 12, which seems unlikely this year, the Insight will have the sixth pick of Big 12 teams and the Independence Bowl seventh. The Insight also gets a team from the Big 10 Conference, and Independence takes a team from the Southeastern Conference.

Leach

The same organization administers three postseason games this year: the BCS championship game, the Fiesta Bowl and the Insight Bowl. Steve Whiteman, a representative of the Fiesta/Insight bowls, said he and another official were on hand to look at both Tech and Baylor.

"Tech had a little bit better overall record,'' Whiteman said. "Obviously, with the win (Saturday), certainly there's a possibility of (Tech) being in the Insight Bowl this year,'' Within the conference, Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Nebraska and Missouri all have better records than Tech at the moment with each having at least seven wins.

Tech overcame a 14-7 deficit to beat Baylor as Filani caught eight passes for 212 yards and three touchdowns and Graham Harrell had his third good game in a row. Since he sputtered at midseason and was pulled from two games in a row, Harrell has rebounded against Iowa State, Texas and Baylor to complete 70.1 percent of his passes for 1,370 yards, 13 touchdowns and two interceptions.

Shannon Woods ran for a career-high 125 yards on 10 carries and scored three touchdowns.

After taking a 7-0 lead on its first possession, Tech turned the ball over on its downs, punted, threw an interception and punted again. But the next nine possessions yielded six touchdowns and two field goals.

Filani

"When we had that lull going on,'' Tech coach Mike Leach said, "there were some guys on the sideline that really raised the level of excitement, which I thought was really key to our team turning it on and playing well.''

Filani had his fourth game of the season with at least 100 yards receiving and his third game in the last two years with three touchdowns. He has 12 TD receptions this season, one short of the school record that Jarrett Hicks set two years ago.

Filani said the Bears' cover-two and cover-three schemes made him think he could have a good game.

"We knew the middle of the field and also the outside corners would be kind of open,'' he said, "so we just tried to take advantage of that. Also, Shannon ran the ball well, so that opened things up for everybody.''

Leach for the fourth week in a row not to have the usual Sunday night practice.

In the last three weeks, Tech has two wins and a close loss to No. 5 Texas, having called off its Sunday night practice in advance of each.