By Will Martin
Old timers who are big on their tradition know how for almost a century two cross town rivals meet up for bragging rights. The winner got to enjoy that which we refer to as the Iron Skillet. TCU and SMU met for the 94th on Saturday.
Any hopes for a close game were eliminated once the Horned Frogs stopped making mistakes after the first period.
Trevone Boykin would enjoy a four touchdown performance by air and a fifth on the ground the TCU quarterback combined for 398 yards.
Two of his touchdown passes went to Deante Gray. One each to Desmon White and Josh Doctson.
B.J. Catalon added a workmanlike 118 yards on the ground in what amounted to a 56-0 blowout of the SMU Mustangs.
Save for a Hail Mary play at North Texas, SMU’s offense has yet to reach the end zone in 2014.
Tom Mason was impressed by what TCU brought to the table.
TCU is a good football team. I’ll be glad to get out of the Big 12 and get into our conference. We have to look at everything we’re doing rigt now. e can’t keep going like we’re going. That’s my job tomorrow. We just have to believe in ourselves. We have to play smart. We had some penalties on third downs. I didn’t think we played smart at times today. I thought the effort, for the most part, was pretty good.
TCU Coach Gary Patterson obviously has other ideas.
Offensively we need to play better. They have not played in a long time and we need a sense of urgency. One of the things that happened was that were down three offensive linemen. Fabuluje tightened up his back and didn’t play the whole game. We left Matt Pryor home because of injury and Bobby Thompson because of player policy. He broke a team rule. He was suspended for a game. So we had to move tight ends to tackles.
TCU would score exactly 28 points in the first half, another 28 points in the second half. One highlight of the first half was seeing a drive that ran plays for 99 yards. In true up tempo fashion it took all of under three minutes. Not bad, eh coach?
It was good to get out of there. Anytime you can sustain a drive…that was one of the things I was most excited about. We overcame some penalties today and we also did some things where we drove the football for some first downs.
Trevone Boykin addressed the win and having had two bye weeks in the last month.
We haven’t had a game in two weeks, so some of the stuff that happened in the first quarter was to just get back in the game flow. I feel like right before halftime we picked it up. I felt like we had a good drive before half, and we have to come out in the second half just as hot as we ended in the first. That was a downfall in the second half, we feel like we let go of the gas, and we did not need to do that.
Any regrets over missed opportunities that come to mind?
You cannot harp on those things. We are going to go in and watch film tomorrow. I am pretty sure if we throw a touchdown pass and another is wide open, we’re not going to say, ‘oh you should have thrown it to this guy’. At the end of the day, we came out with the win. It was a good team victory, and we are 3-0. We are excited, and tomorrow we are going to work for Oklahoma.
One are of concern was the special teams for TCU as Jaden Oberkrom actually showed frailty in a missed 45-yard field goal early in the game. A second field goal attempt was blocked.
TCU amassed 614 yards on 81 plays with 31 first downs. SMU ran 78 plays for 245 yards. Need we go any further?
SMU quarterback Garrett Krstich found the going rough completing only 14 of 30 passes for 142 yards. There were two instances where the Mustangs were knocking on the door trying to make a score. TCU would deny the Mustangs on four downs early in the first period. Again as time ran out in regulation with SMU getting sacked inside the 5 yard line.
TCU now 3-0 with Oklahoma next on the docket at home on October 4. SMU goes on the road for three weeks before returning October 18 to play the Bearcats of Cincinnati.
