Big 12 SB Nation Whiparound: Week 6

#2 TCU 52 @ Kansas State 45

This game looked like it was over after one play, as Aaron Greene went 86 yards to put TCU up early.  Then it looked like it was over at halftime as KSU put up 28 second-quarter points to lead 35-17 at half.  But it wasn't over until K-State quarter Joe Hubener was literally in tears on the sideline after fumbling on his own 20 with 53 seconds left in the game.

Bring on the Cats was thrilled with the way K-State competed, but of course disappointed in the ending:

This team could have listened to the press. They could have listened to me. They could have believed they had no chance.

Instead, they came out and punched TCU in the face for 30 minutes.

Just as with last week, K-State collapsed in the second half, and just as last week the blame for that rests largely on the coaching staff.

Tonight's loss isn't on the players. It's on the press box. The players didn't fail. The staff did. Worse, they failed the players. They had no faith. And that's all we have to say about that.

Frogs O' War is simply glad to be 6-0 at this point given the concerns with their defense:

They forced two turnovers, including one when it mattered most, but this defense still has a ton of growing up to do. As good as Hubener was on the ground, the linebackers found themselves out of position multiple times and it cost them. Meanwhile, five pass interference calls absolutely has to get sorted out ASAP. I don't know what the coaches have to do to get guys like Denzel Johnson and Corry O'Meally to turn their heads around, but they need to do it now.

#3 Baylor 66 @ Kansas 7

Baylor's starters came out from halftime without pads on as the Bears had no trouble with the punchless Jayhawks.  Our Daily Bears wanted a dominating performance against an inferior opponent, and that's precisely what happened.

All-in-all, the only real negative I can come up with from this game is that it took 57.5 minutes of game time for Fox's Tim Brando to pronounce Jarrett Stidham's name correctly, and that was after (apparently) being told twice.

I don't know of any major or even minor injuries at this point from this game; and Baylor turned in the devastatingly dominant effort everyone expected and hoped to see.

As for RCT, the game went exactly as everyone expected:

We all expected a blowout and Kansas did not disappoint. Although there are some positives we can gleam from this mess. For starters, we may have found a new quarterback in Ryan Willis.

#10 Oklahoma 17 vs Texas 24

Everyone take a second to "LoL" at Oklahoma.  Go ahead, it's OK.  The Longhorns have been melting down for weeks but waltzed into the Cotton Bowl and put a clown hat on Bob Stoops (thanks to David for that visual).

Crimson and Cream Machine was unsurprisingly unimpressed:

Missed tackles and a lack of the run game is why Oklahoma lost this game. Both sides of the ball lacked execution and now it feels like this season will be another 10-3 season in which the Sooners were just a couple of plays away from being great.

Seventeen points is a season-low for Oklahoma's offense and it came against a defense that was giving up an average of 41 points per game coming in. Let's not sugarcoat this at all, this is a really bad Texas football team and they took Oklahoma's offensive line out behind the woodshed and beat the life out of them. That's bad, it's real bad!

You'd think that Texas had just won the national title if you looked at Burnt Orange Nation.  But, they do recognize that there's still plenty of room for improvement.

In all, it wasn't a flawless offensive performance overall for Texas with 368 total yards and only 55 passing yards, but the offensive line was extremely physical, Heard made some plays, and some new wrinkles by Norvell were more than enough to come out with the victory on a day when the defense gave up fewer than 300 yards and held Oklahoma to only 1.8 yards per carry.

I'm not sure how Texas managed to win this game considering the anti-Texas sentiment among Big 12 officials, but kudos to them for rising up and knocking off a highly ranked rival.

#21 Oklahoma State 33 @ West Virginia 26

I have no idea what happened in this game, so let's get right to the blogs.  First up, Cowboys Ride For Free:

I'm not sure I could write enough words on how good this defense is.  Ogbah might be the best dang defensive end in the country. Every play, he's running at 100 miles per hour and it doesn't look like anyone can stop him. What makes it even better is that on the other side, Jimmy Bean is also a top sack guy in the nation, standing in the top 10.

Now, of course, any team in this conference can win any game, except Kansas, but they traded that away for basketball. So there's still plenty of games OSU could lose. However, if it plays out well, the Cowboys will have the only two undefeated teams in the conference at home near the end of the season.

And now OSU goes into their perfectly timed bye week undefeated at 6-0, 3-0 in Big 12 play, with Kansas coming to Stillwater in two weeks. The Cowboys will most assuredly head to Lubbock on Halloween 7-0, and 4-0 in the Big 12.

Really, CRFF?  That's fine.  Kick a dog when he's down.  I'll remember this.

Smoking Musket was too concerned about the offense to bag on Kansas:

We saw a new version of Skyler Howard that we hadn't really seen before. I'll call him "Mediocre Skyler". Howard was nearly dreadful in the first half, throwing only 31 passing yards through 2 quarters.

The Mountaineer defense was once again the collective players of the game. Tony Gibson's unit gave Skyler Howard and the offense numerous chances by forcing 3-and-out throughout the game.

And for all you fun stat nerds out there:

West Virginia has not won a conference game at night in Morgantown since joining the Big 12 Conference.

Iowa State 31 @ Texas Tech 66

WRNL was not surprised by the beatdown, but was disappointed in how it came about:

Sam B. Richardson threw an interception on Iowa State's first play from scrimmage, Texas Tech scored a touchdown three plays later, and the Red Raiders never trailed en route to a 66-31 victory in Lubbock on Saturday.

Despite a 23 carry, 245 yard performance from Mike Warren the Cyclones abandoned the run at inopportune times when the game was within reach and paid for it due to Richardson's poor performance behind center.

Conversely, Viva the Matadors had lots of fun on Saturday:

Jakeem Grant and DeAndre Washington absolutely carved ISU up in the open field. When you play teams like Baylor and TCU who can match you in speed, it's easy to forget how fast you actually are. When we got the ball to anyone with 5 yards of space, they were gone, no questions asked.

But there are still concerns about the Red Raiders' defense:

I expected our defense to step up and show me more than they showed me today. We ranged from serviceable to pretty bad. I still don't think we're playing to our potential on the defensive side of the ball. We've got to be better if we want to take the next step from a pretty good program to a good or great one.