Texas slams Missouri in Homecoming game

The Longhorns led 21-0 at the end of the first quarter and didn’t look back.

By Evan Glantz

Published Oct. 24, 2009

Saturday night was supposed to be an exciting Homecoming game for the Tigers and a sold-out crowd of 71,004.

But the Texas Longhorns dominated the Missouri defense, and suffocated its offense on the way to a 41-7 victory.

“I can’t be more disappointed,” coach Gary Pinkel said. “There were a lot of mistakes. I’m not taking anything away from (Texas), but I expect my football team to play a lot better than that. I don’t care who we’re playing. I don’t care if it’s the New England Patriots.”

Senior quarterback and last year’s Heisman Trophy runner-up Colt McCoy, who lived up to his billing by completing 26 of his 31 passes and throwing for 269 yards and three touchdowns, led the Longhorns. The Longhorn’s signal caller did not throw an incomplete pass until midway through the second quarter.

“You’ve got to come out for the big games,” senior linebacker Sean Weatherspoon said. “You’ve got to be fired up against guys like Texas and Oklahoma. You have to match and exceed their intensity. We just didn’t start the game correctly.”

Texas scored on each of its first three drives and had a 21-0 lead by the end of the first quarter. McCoy threw two touchdowns, and sophomore running back Fozzy Whittaker ran for another.

“We were beating ourselves, and we weren’t communicating well enough on coverages,” sophomore linebacker Will Ebner said. “On most of their scores, we got one side of the field running one coverage, and the other side running another.”

The Tigers appeared to find a rhythm in the second quarter. Freshman tailback Kendial Lawrence came in as a change of pace and promptly took off for a 22-yard run.

Junior tailback Derrick Washington added a 13-yard run to set up Missouri’s first and only touchdown. Sophomore quarterback Blaine Gabbert found senior wide receiver Jared Perry for an 11-yard score.

The good feelings would not last. With less than a minute remaining in the first half, the Longhorns blocked and recovered a punt in Missouri’s end zone to go up 35-7 and effectively seal the game.

Further dampening the mood on Faurot Field was Gabbert's departure from the game in the middle of the third quarter. He appeared to re-injure his right ankle. Gabbert finished the night eight of 16 for 84 yards and a touchdown.

“(Gabbert) is OK," Pinkel said. "It was just precautionary. He was real upset that we took him out. But if we could have been in a position to score, maybe get back in the game a little bit, then we would have played him.”

Gabbert said he rolled his ankle and irritated the injury he sustained against Nebraska on Oct. 8. But when asked about whether he would play next weekend in Colorado, Gabbert was firm in his answer.

“No doubt about it,” Gabbert said.

After the loss to Texas, the Tigers find themselves in a hole. The team is 0-3 in Big 12 play and knows in order to compete for the Big 12 North championship, it needs to make the most of the next five games.

“There’s no other option,” Ebner said. “What we’re doing right now isn’t Mizzou and we’ve got to get back on track.”