Football giant Texas defeats Tulsa by a surprisingly narrow margin.
The Tulsa Golden Hurricane football team traveled to Austin this past Saturday to take on the Texas Longhorns in their second game of the season.
The game started auspiciously with a Tulsa interception on the first play from scrimmage, setting Texas up with great field position, which they turned into a touchdown a few plays later.
Tulsa stabilized from there, relying on their run game to work the ball up the field before missing a 43-yard field goal.
Texas then drove down the field to the one-yard line, but the Tulsa defense held strong. Facing fourth down and perhaps frustrated at their inability to score on Tulsa’s defense, Texas decided to make another attempt at a touchdown instead of taking the field goal. The defense once again held, keeping the score 7-0.
On the next possession, presumably worried about turning the ball over at their own one-yard line, TU ran the ball three times before punting, and Texas scored shortly after receiving possession to go up 14-0.
Another Luke Skipper interception on a long pass gave the ball back to Texas, but nothing came of it, and both teams traded punts until Tulsa’s offense drove to the Texas 12 before stalling out and resulting in another missed field goal.
Texas took over and drove down the field to make the score 21-0. Tulsa’s offense once again worked their way to the red zone before stalling at the Texas 19, where yet another missed field goal occurred.
A Texas penalty gave Tulsa another shot at the kick, and kicker Nathan Walker, who at this point had missed two field goals, was replaced by John Parker Romo.
A Tulsa false start moved the ball right back to the 19, where Romo also missed the field goal. Texas ran out the clock into halftime.
Up 21-0 and seeming feeling overly confident, Texas came into the second half incredibly flat. After trading punts for a few possessions, a bad Texas punt set up Tulsa at the Texas 33.
A Skipper keeper on fourth down went for 21 yards, and two runs later, Tulsa punched into the end zone to make the score 21-7.
Texas’s offense was once again forced to punt, and Tulsa scored again on a drive highlighted by a 48-yard pass to Keylon Stokes. Admittedly, the pass was an underthrown ball that the Texas corner simply didn’t turn around in time to intercept, but it was the longest throw of the night for the Tulsa offense and the first time the Tulsa receivers had won a deep shot against the Texas defense.
Tulsa ran the ball in a play later to make the score 21-14, putting the entire stadium into a state of nervous silence as the possibility of an upset became realistic. The Texas offense drove down the field with ease, only seeing a third down once on the entire drive before scoring to make the score 28-14.
Tulsa yet again drove up the field, this time primarily relying on Skipper’s arm, ending on a 35-yard catch-and-run to make the score 28-21 with almost just under 5 minutes left.
However, the Texas offense was able to run this time off and kneeled to end the game with the score Texas 28, Tulsa 21.
