Sam Houston beat Nicholls 59-0 in Week 3.
Sam Houston ended its 0-2 start by beating Nicholls 59-0. The offense piled up 619 total yards, the most any Phil Longo team has produced at Sam Houston. The defense held Nicholls to 124 rushing yards and 39 passing yards, at 3.4 yards per carry, with six tackles for loss.
A blowout of an FCS team settles nothing, but it did show that Longo's Air Raid, still called by Longo himself and still built to attack from the slot, can finish drives and not just accumulate yardage.
Saturday in Lubbock, 11 a.m. Central on TNT
The model gives the Bearkats a 1.3 percent chance, and that is the honest number. Texas Tech opened as roughly a 37.5-point favorite.
Here is the number worth carrying into the morning anyway. Texas Tech is 3-0 straight up and 0-3 against the spread. Sam Houston is 1-2 and has covered all three times. That is not a prediction of an upset; it is evidence that this team has played closer to good competition than its record says.
And there is a real matchup underneath it. Sam Houston is averaging 345.7 passing yards per game while Texas Tech is allowing 272.7 and has given up six passing touchdowns, even as its run defense has smothered opponents at 102 rushing yards a game with no rushing scores allowed. Do not expect Landan Brown and Alton McCaskill to find the creases they found against Nicholls. Nearly every yard Sam Houston gets is likely to come from Landyn Locke throwing it, against the one Red Raider unit that has actually bled.
So watch the first two drives. If Locke is still standing clean and Grady O'Neill and Kamari Maxwell are winning inside, the Bearkats will move the ball on a Big 12 defense, and that is the thing you want to know before Conference USA play starts. The run defense matters just as much in the other direction. One hundred twenty-four yards allowed against Nicholls tells you nothing yet, and Texas Tech's ground game will either erase that improvement in a quarter or confirm it.
The other cost of this trip is the setting. The crowd at Bowers Stadium, where the first game of the season against Tulsa featured synchronized LED wristbands as part of the game-day presentation, is the home-field edge Sam Houston leaves behind. Lubbock offers the opposite, plus a national TNT window that most CUSA teams never get in September.
Nothing else on this week's board moves Sam Houston's season. Watch Locke, watch the protection, and see whether the offense that produced 619 total yards is a scheme working or a schedule cooperating.