By Adam Zuvanich | AVALANCHE-JOURNAL

Expanded Game Day Coverage

Dez Bryant arrived at Jones AT&T Stadium Saturday as the second-leading receiver in the nation.

By the time he left Lubbock, the Oklahoma State star was just another casualty of Texas Tech’s defense.

The Red Raiders held Bryant to one of his least-productive games of the season, which helped produce a 56-20 win that made Tech 10-0 for the first time since 1938. Bryant didn’t catch a pass until the waning seconds of the first half and finished with four receptions for 86 yards and no touchdowns, a week after hauling in nine passes for 171 yards and a career-high four TDs in a rout of Iowa State.

The 6-foot-2, 215-pound sophomore entered Saturday’s game with 60 catches for 1,054 yards and 15 touchdowns, which was tied for the national lead with Tech’s Mike Crabtree – who zoomed past Bryant with three TD catches against the Cowboys.

“I thought they did a pretty good job,” Tech coach Mike Leach said of his defense. “I thought they did a pretty good job of hitting him when they could, and I thought they did a good job of covering him, because he’s a real explosive player and a real factor with the ball in his hands.”

Tech safeties Darcel McBath and Daniel Charbonnet, who had a hand in two turnovers, both said the Red Raiders had a “great scheme” against Bryant. Neither would elaborate – with Tech defensive coordinator Ruffin McNeill cutting off Charbonnet before he could answer – but whatever the plan was, Tech couldn’t have execute it much better.

Much the same could be said about the previous two performances by Tech’s secondary. Two weeks ago the Raiders held Kansas’ Dezmon Briscoe to eight catches for 55 yards – a week after Briscoe set school records with 12 receptions for 269 yards – and last week they kept Texas’ Jordan Shipley in check.

Shipley was coming off a game in which he caught a school-record 15 passes for 168 yards against Oklahoma State, but he had only six catches for 42 yards against Tech.

“I give all the credit to Carlos Mainord and Brian Mitchell. It starts with those guys,” McNeill said of Tech’s safeties coach and cornerbacks coach. “I trust them with the coverages and route thought process – that’s what we do on Mondays. We get together in the afternoon, and they tell me what (a player’s) route preference may be. … And our kids are able to apply it.”

The Red Raiders didn’t just excel at pass defense. They held the Cowboys well below their season averages for passing yards, rushing yards and total yards and points, which was a far cry from last year’s game in Stillwater, Okla.

Oklahoma State racked up 610 total yards and had three different 100-yard rushers in a 49-45 victory, so it was gratifying for Tech’s defensive players to put together the type of performance they had Saturday.

“A lot of us were embarrassed by the way we played on defense, and we’ve always used that as what we don’t want to have happen again,” Charbonnet said. “So it felt good to make some plays defensively and come up with some stops.”

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