No. 13 Texas Tech Runs for 328 Yards, Beats No. 22 Arizona 34-26 With Thomas Castellanos at QB

Joey McGuire spent the week owning a mistake. After a 37-24 loss at Cincinnati, the Texas Tech coach said it had been "a total failure" on his part not to give Thomas Castellanos a shot in that game. On Saturday he did more than give him a shot. He gave him the keys, and the fifth-year quarterback drove No. 13 Texas Tech right back into the middle of the Big 12 race.

Texas Tech beat No. 22 Arizona 34-26 in Lubbock, rallying from a 10-point first-half deficit behind a running game that piled up 328 yards. Castellanos threw two touchdown passes and ran for another, J'Koby Williams went for 175 yards on 14 carries and iced it with a 64-yard touchdown run with 2:05 left, and the Red Raiders moved to 7-1 and 4-1 in the Big 12. Arizona, which had won five straight, fell to 6-2 and 3-2.

Noah Fifita threw for 417 yards and Isaiah Mizell caught a 94-yard touchdown. It was not enough, because Arizona finished with 12 rushing yards on 30 carries. When one team runs for 328 and the other runs for 12, you do not need a film session to explain the result.

A quarterback change with a point to prove

The decision itself was a story. Castellanos, a former Florida State, Boston College and UCF quarterback with 33 career starts, joined Texas Tech in late August after a Kentucky judge granted him a fifth year of eligibility. His season had been a legal roller coaster, and he had mostly been used in short-yardage and red-zone packages. Will Hammond had started, but the offense did not score a touchdown at Cincinnati until the final minute, and McGuire went looking for a spark. "How can we put us in the best situation?" was the question he said the staff asked itself.

The answer showed up on the first Tech drive. Castellanos converted two third downs and a fourth down, twice with his legs, and capped it with a 24-yard touchdown pass to tight end Terrance Carter Jr. at 7:03 of the first quarter. That answered an opening Arizona field goal, a 35-yarder by Michael Salgado-Medina set up by Fifita's 55-yard strike to Giovanni Richardson on third-and-3.

Fifita and Mizell strike back

Arizona did not flinch. Midway through the second quarter, backed up at his own 6, Fifita found Mizell behind the defense, and Mizell did the rest for a 94-yard touchdown that put the Wildcats up 10-7. Late in the half, a Texas Tech pass interference penalty on fourth down kept an Arizona drive alive, and Kedrick Reescano punched it in from 5 yards out with 1:56 left. It was 17-7, and Arizona had control.

Castellanos made sure it did not stay that way. He ripped off runs of 24 and 25 yards in the final two minutes to get Tech into the red zone, and Stone Harrington's 29-yard field goal with 24 seconds left cut it to 17-10 at the break. That drive mattered more than the three points. It told Texas Tech that the quarterback could run this offense when it needed him.

The turning point: the third quarter

The third quarter was a heavyweight round. Texas Tech came out and tied it, with Castellanos finishing a drive on an 8-yard touchdown run at 10:02. Arizona answered with Fifita hitting Mizell for 35 yards on third-and-4, and Reescano scored from a yard out at 5:34. But Texas Tech blocked the extra point, and that missing point would loom over everything after.

Castellanos then threw the ball that flipped the game. Late in the quarter, he found Kenny Johnson for a 27-yard touchdown at 2:33, and the PAT made it 24-23 Texas Tech. Harrington's 42-yard field goal 17 seconds into the fourth quarter made it 27-23.

Here is where the blocked extra point bites. Arizona drove deep into Tech territory midway through the fourth quarter and needed a touchdown, not a field goal, because a field goal would still leave it a point short. The Wildcats went for it on fourth down inside the 20 and came up empty with 9:12 left.

Arizona's last chances

The Wildcats got another break almost immediately. Cam Chapa forced a Cameron Dickey fumble and Dwight Bootle II recovered at the Texas Tech 43 with 8:01 left. It was the kind of turnover that changes the result of a game. Instead, Arizona went nowhere and punted. Its next possession was worse: a sack of Fifita for a 10-yard loss forced another punt with under three minutes left.

Then Texas Tech ended it. Castellanos ran twice to bleed clock and set up the knockout, and Williams found a crease and outran everybody 64 yards to the end zone with 2:05 left. That made it 34-23, and that was effectively the game. Arizona drove for a 22-yard Salgado-Medina field goal with 22 seconds left, but Texas Tech recovered the onside kick and Castellanos took a knee.

The ground game decided it

Texas Tech ran it 47 times for 328 yards. Williams, who came in with 619 rushing yards, had more than a quarter of that total in one afternoon. Castellanos added 117 yards on 19 carries and was the reason the Arizona defense could never sit on the run. He completed only 11 of 24 passes for 144 yards, but both of his touchdowns came in the biggest moments, and he did not throw an interception.

On the other side, the Red Raiders' defense was every bit as important. Texas Tech came in strong against the run, and it made Arizona one-dimensional. The Wildcats' 12 rushing yards included sack losses, but even the designed runs went nowhere. Austin Romaine led Tech with 14 tackles, six different Red Raiders got in on a sack, and Tech got to Fifita five times in all.

Fifita was terrific for long stretches. He completed 33 of 45 passes for 417 yards with no interceptions, and Mizell finished with seven catches for 182 yards. Richardson added six for 90, and Malcolm Hartzog Jr. made 10 tackles for a defense that spent the afternoon chasing ball carriers. But with no running game, Arizona's offense had to be perfect on every drive, and it was not.

What it means

This was the game both teams circled. The winner stays in the Big 12 title race and the loser takes a major hit, which is how The Daily Wildcat framed it in the week. Texas Tech got the result it needed after the Cincinnati loss and now hosts West Virginia on Nov. 7. The quarterback question may not be fully settled, but Castellanos made a loud case.

For Arizona, it is the first loss since a Week 2 defeat at BYU, and it snaps a five-game winning streak during which the Wildcats beat teams by nearly 24 points per game. Brent Brennan's team still has a lot to play for, with TCU, Utah, Kansas State and Arizona State left, starting with TCU at home on Nov. 7. Last week's 39-3 rout of Iowa State showed what this team looks like when everything works. Saturday showed what happens when the run game disappears.

For Texas Tech, this was a bounce-back after the loss at Cincinnati, and it came the hard way: down 10, against a ranked team, with a new starter.

The last word

Fifita threw for 417 yards and lost. That says a lot about Arizona's problem and even more about what Texas Tech is when it commits to running the football. McGuire made a call that could have backfired. Instead, the Red Raiders found an identity in Castellanos' legs and Williams' burst, and they head into November right back in the conversation.

All the numbers are in the ESPN box score (opens in a new tab).

Sources: ESPN box score and play-by-play, ESPN, Yahoo Sports live updates, The Daily Wildcat, Arizona Sports and Texas Tech Athletics. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photos: Texas Tech Athletics (Galaxy Stadium file photo).