AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -The football floated in the night air like a balloon. Then it started to fall.
Texas freshman safety Blake Gideon lunged, got both arms around it and – plop! – the ball bounced off the turf.
No catch. No interception. No game-saving, season-saving, national-title-hopes-saving play for a freshman whose chance to a be hero slipped through his hands.
Moments later, Texas Tech ‘s Michael Crabtree was dancing in the end zone and thousands of Red Raiders fans flooded the field. The Longhorns left as 39-33 losers after spending a month at No. 1.
It would have been easy for a young player to be crushed by such a missed opportunity.
Not Gideon, described by coaches and teammates as too tough to crack. How tough? In high school, he played four games with two cracked vertebrae in his back.
“I don’t take it for more than it was. It was a play that should have been made,” Gideon said. “I’ve moved on.”
oing to do is fight really hard to try to get that play back one of these days. What’s sad is he had such a great body of work as a freshman and that’s the play people talk about. I wish they’d talk about the 12 games that he played better than a freshman should.”
In a perfect world, maybe, but not with No. 2 Texas (2-0) hosting Texas Tech (2-0) Saturday night in a prime-time rematch of last season’s thriller.
Playing Tech is a challenge for any secondary. Texas did it last season with freshmen Gideon and Earl Thomas starting in the backfield.
“I guess that threw us into the fire,” Gideon said. “We grew up quick.”
They held up fairly well most of the night. Texas rallied from a 19-0 deficit to take a 33-32 lead on Vondrell McGee’s short touchdown run with 1:29 to play.
The Red Raiders drove to the Texas 28 before quarterback Graham Harrell was flushed from the pocket, rolled to his left and tossed a soft pass to Edward Britton. The receiver got both hands on the ball but popped it straight up in the air.
Just a few feet away, Gideon leaned in and appeared to have safely cradled the ball. But no.
Texas Tech cornerback Taylor Charbonnet was watching from the sideline and exhaled with 50,000 Red Raiders fans.
ust know the whole sideline went crazy once we realized that happened. It was such a relief to know that he didn’t catch the ball.”
Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, as usual, has a different take on the drop.
“I didn’t think he’d catch it,” Leach said this week. “It’s always interesting to me that they highlight that because I can probably rattle off 10 other things that would have allowed us to win by more, so I don’t see that as particularly significant.”
All it did was give Harrell and Crabtree a chance to make THE play of the 2008 season.
Texas tried to cover Crabtree with cornerback Curtis Brown and Thomas was supposed to roll over to help. But Thomas, thinking he had heard a whistle blowing the play dead, was a step late and didn’t make a hit on Crabtree to knock him out of bounds.
“Earl heard a whistle in the stands and he stopped. He thought if he hit him, it would be a penalty and put them in field goal position. That’s why he pulled off,” Brown said.
“That’s a shame,” Leach said.
The loss ultimately helped create a three-way in the Big 12 South. The Longhorns didn’t get to play for the league title and by extension, didn’t get to play for the national championship either. Quarterback Colt McCoy’s Heisman hopes also took a hit.
Gideon says there was no finger-pointing in the locker room.
es told me they weren’t going to let that happen, and basically that was selfish to be hard on myself and let it affect me beyond that point,” Gideon said.
“That’s all that mattered to me. People could write what they wanted, say what they wanted. But all that mattered to me, what the guys I went to war with thought about it,” he said.
Gideon suggested things outside the locker room weren’t so good. There were e-mails and voice mails and messages from fans that he hints weren’t very nice, but he wouldn’t say what they were.
“I kind of blocked all that out,” he said.
Today, Gideon and Thomas can joke with each other about the final two plays of Texas’ only loss last season – sort of.
“Sure. We aren’t going to forget it as competitors,” Gideon said. “At the same time, we understand that we need to move on and have moved on.”
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Associated Press Writer Betsy Blaney in Lubbock, Texas, contributed to this report.
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