Here's a look at what happened in the Lone Star State and with LSU
Saturday NCAA Football Recap: Tough losses plague Texas teams in Week 12; LSU remains undefeated
Nov 17, 2019, 12:09 pm
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Memphis 45, Houston 27
Houston quarterback Clayton Tune burst up the middle for a 68-yard touchdown run early in the first quarter. That was the most memorable offensive play of the game for the Cougars. Memphis quarterback Brady White threw for 341 yards and five touchdowns and ran for another score and No. 18 Memphis overcame a 10-point first-quarter deficit to beat the pants off Houston 45-27 on Saturday. Tune was 14-of-22 for 157 yards with one touchdown for the Cougars. "I think we ran out of gas with four minutes to go in the second quarter," Houston coach Dana Holgorsen said. Houston started off strong but was held to just 113 yards of total offense in the final three quarters. The Cougars got into the red zone and settled for field goals twice. Memphis finished with nine tackles for loss and three sacks. Houston is at Tulsa on Saturday.
LSU 58, Mississippi 37
Joe "Superman" Burrow was unbelievably good against Ole Miss on Saturday night. The Heisman front-runner completed 32 of 42 passes, threw for a career-best 489 yards and five touchdowns, and the top-ranked Tigers rolled past Mississippi 58-37. LSU built an early lead, scoring on four of its first five possessions to jump out to a 28-0 lead over the Rebels. "It wasn't pretty, but we did it after a big win last week," LSU coach Ed Orgeron said. "We came in here to win a football game and we won by 21 points. We're 10-0 and I'm very proud of that." At one point, Burrow completed 17 consecutive passes to set a school record, passing Rohan Davey's 2001 single-season school record for yards passing. Sophomore receiver Ja'Marr Chase snagged touchdown passes of 34, 51, and 61 yards for 227 total yards for LSU. "We dug ourselves too deep a hole," Ole Miss coach Matt Luke said. "We had a chance to get it to a one possession game, but we never could get there." Ole Miss freshman quarterback John Rhys Plumlee finished with 212 yards rushing, a school quarterback record, three touchdowns and was 9 of 16 passing for 123 yards. LSU hosts Arkansas on Saturday.
Iowa State 23, Texas 21
Connor Assalley drilled a 36-yarder as time expired and Iowa State beat No. 22 Texas 23-21 on Saturday. Iowa State quarterback Brock Purdy had 354 yards passing and two touchdowns, and he led the Cyclones 63 yards in three minutes to set up the field goal of Assalley's life. "They continue to fight when I think everyone has written us off at times," Iowa State coach Matt Campbell said. "Our kids just keep playing." Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger had 273 yards and three touchdowns for the Longhorns. Ehlinger gave Texas a 21-20 lead with a seven-yard touchdown pass to Malcolm Epps with 5:37 to go. But the Cyclones stuffed the Longhorns on their next possession. "Obviously a really, really poor performance by our offense the first two quarters," Texas coach Tom Herman said. "Not being able to run the ball the way we thought we would be able to was the biggest difference." Texas plays at Baylor on Saturday.
Oklahoma 34, Baylor 31
Boomer Sooner. Oklahoma quarterback Jalen Hurts threw four touchdown passes and Gabe Brkic booted a 31-yard field goal with 1:45 left to cap the Sooner's wild 34-31 comeback victory over Baylor on Saturday. Although the Sooners were without star receiver Cee Dee Lamb, Hurts was 30-of-42 passing for 297 yards, all of his touchdowns coming after Baylor took a 28-3 lead early in the second quarter. The loss snaps Baylor's 11-game win streak leaving No. 1 LSU, No. 2 Ohio State and No. 3 Clemson as the only undefeated FBS teams. Baylor hosts No. 19 Texas on Saturday.
TCU 33, Texas Tech 31
After squandering multiple 17-point leads in the first half, Jonathan Song won TCU the battle for bowl eligibility on a 20-yarder with 5:38 left to play. TCU quarterback Max Duggan accounted for 323 yards and all three touchdowns, helping the Horned Frogs to a 33-31 win over Big 12 rival Texas Tech. TCU's Vernon Scott forced a fumble by McLane Mannix on Tech's final possession. The Frogs' went into play ranked first in the Big 12 in holding opponents below their total offense average. Texas Tech, which went into the game averaging 478.6 yards, was held to 402. TCU visits Oklahoma on Saturday and Tech hosts Kansas State.
Troy 63, Texas State 27
Troy quarterback Kaleb Barker threw for 363 yards and a school-record six touchdown passes to roll over Texas State 63-27 on Saturday. Texas State quarterback Tyler Vitt was 29-of-44 passing for 263 yards and two touchdowns, but was intercepted four times.
Rice 31, Middle Tennessee 28
Rice quarterback Tom Stewart threw three touchdowns and Rice beat Middle Tennessee for its first win of the season. Stewart finished 12-of-23 passing for 222 yards.
It’s been an excellent weeklong stretch of games for the Astros tempered by the news of yet another season-ending injury to a starting pitcher. To get the bad news out of the way, it comes as no surprise that Ronel Blanco needs Tommy John surgery and is done until at least the middle of next season. While Blanco had not been nearly as good through nine 2025 starts as he was last season, he was still taking his regular return and on average getting into the sixth inning. Blanco turns 32 years old at the end of August. He’s not even salary arbitration-eligible until 2027. That last fact may be good news for him. The Astros will likely keep Blanco next year in hopes he can contribute in the second half of the season, since they will pay him barely the Major League minimum salary ($780,000 next year) That’s in contrast to Jose Urquidy, who in the midst of his salary arbitration years would have cost about three and a half million dollars to keep, so the Astros non-tendered him.
With Blanco joining Hayden Wesneski in the “See you next year! Hopefully.” club, it struck me as interesting that the Astros let Lance McCullers throw 102 pitches in his Wednesday outing vs. the Athletics. That’s eleven more than he had thrown in any of his prior four starts. McCullers holding up physically would be a huge boost, but the new essentials in the Astros’ rotation are Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown. Framber has settled in to the tune of a 1.93 earned run average over his last four starts. Brown’s season ERA is 2.00. Brown has had five days of rest before all eleven of his starts this season. This Sunday is Brown’s presently next scheduled outing. He would work on four days of rest if on the mound Sunday against the Rays.
Taking the last two games from the Mariners was huge (for the second half of May anyway). Keeping the good times rolling by sweeping the two-game miniseries from the A’s was less significant but still nice. Maybe not quite nice enough to have Frank “The Tank” from the movie Old School belting out “We’re going streaking!!!” but it did give the Astros their first four game winning streak of the season. They still have not lost more than three straight.
On a heater!
Speaking of streaking, time for annual mention of one of my all-time favorite baseball factoids. The 1916 New York Giants hold the MLB record for the longest win streak with an incredible 26 in a row. Earlier in the season the Giants ripped off 17 in a row. Combine the two streaks and that’s 43-0! The 1916 New York Giants finished in fourth place. In all their other games the Giants went 43-66. The American League’s longest ever winning streak is of fairly recent vintage. The 2007 Cleveland Indians won 22 straight. There have been only two other winning streaks since 1900 of at least 20 games. The 1935 Chicago Cubs won 21 straight. The Art Howe-managed 2002 Oakland A’s won 20 in a row, and were the inspiration for the movie Moneyball. The Astros have three 12 game winning streaks as the longest in their history.
Expect the unexpected
Tuesday’s win over the A’s brought the Astros to the one-third completed point of the regular season. Isaac Paredes was definitely their best offensive player to that milepost. His “on pace for” numbers were the best on the ballclub 33 home runs and 93 runs batted in. Paredes also led in runs scored with 29. The last Astro to lead the team in all three of those categories was Alex Bregman who did it in both 2018 and 2019. That Bregman was clearly a better player than this Paredes, but Isaac healthy and making “only” 6.625 million dollars this season is a heck of a lot better value than Bregman at 40 mil for the Red Sox, especially given that while Bregman was off to a sensational start for Boston, he’s now out for at least a month with a quad injury.
Hunter Brown is on pace to win 20 games. The last Astro to get there was Gerrit Cole on the last day of the 2019 regular season. The day before that Justin Verlander won his 21st game.
The Cleveland Guardians’ bullpen was awesome last season, by far the best in the league with four relievers who each pitched in at least 74 games posting ERAs of 1.92 or lower, headlined by closer Emmanuel Clase’s microscopic 0.61. One-third of the way through this season for the Astros: Bryan Abreu sat at 1.90, Steven Okert 1.82, Josh Hader 1.57, Bryan King 1.52.
For Astro-centric conversation, join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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