Here we go again, another awful November

Let’s start this off with something that will disturb most Texas Tech fans:

2013 - 0-4

2014 - 1-3

2015 - 2-2

2016 - 1-3

2017 - 2-2

2018 - 0-3

That’s a total of 6-16 for those statisticians out there. Wow. Just, wow. The last month of the season has not been a good for us Red Raider fans since Kliff Kingsbury took over as the Head Coach of the team. Each of these seasons, the team seemed to be making strides in the right direction, when almost out of nowhere, the November blues come calling, and the Red Raiders start losing.

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Now granted, a couple of these teams such as in 2015 and 2017 had mediocre Novembers that have actually saved Kingsbury’s job up to this point. But a 2-1 record is the best a Kingsbury led team has done. The first of the embarrassing Novembers was in Kingsbury’s topsy-turvy 2013 season. Coming into the month, the team had just lost its first game of the season, and it the entire team, Kingsbury included seemed to just take the month off.

It was really embarrassing, the team had two of these games at home and couldn’t win either of them. A neutral site beatdown at the hands of Baylor and a drubbing in Austin to end the regular season, and it appeared that people were already starting to doubt Kingsbury. A bowl win seemed to quiet most of the naysayers for awhile, but it really shouldn’t have, as we see a slide of some sort at the end of every season.

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This season in particular has been especially awful as the team has lost four straight games now, if the team loses to the Baylor Bears next week, there is no doubt in my mind that Kingsbury gets fired promptly. If he wins, then Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt might have some thinking to do. This team looked to be trending in the right direction as there were even discussions of a Big 12 title game berth in the future.

With the way this team has been finishing games the last month, I almost can’t believe the last sentence was written into existence. What is it with this team, this program? Could they just be running out of gas or is it something more? Could the culture of the program be the reason this team seems to take entire months off at the end of regular seasons?

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That’s a rough question to ask, as these guys do play hard and I’ve never had an issue with the effort the team ever puts on the field. The month of November just seems to be a huge hurdle that this team has never really been able to jump over. Whatever it is, it seems to be costing Kingsbury his job as this program seems to start the season strong and it makes everyone around the program incredibly happy as it seems like they have finally turned it around, but every year with the exception of 2015 and 2017, the team takes a nosedive at the end of the year.

Whatever you think of it, one thing is clear: Kingsbury just can’t finish seasons. He won the one bowl game in his first season as a Head Coach and hasn’t in any year since. It’s been rough year after year coming into November with high hopes for this team and those hopes being dashed upon whatever playing field the team happens to take that month. Does that mean we should fire him? Keep him and hope he gets better? You tell me, but this team has gone from a shining ray of hope in October to what looks like a dumpster fire less than one month later.