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Texas Longhorns rally to keep Big 12 title hopes alive despite Sam Ehlinger injury

Texas is in control of its own conference title berth destiny again after Shane Buechele filled in for an injured Sam Ehlinger during the 24-10 win over the Iowa State Cyclones in Austin.

AUSTIN, Texas — Longhorn fans have endless reasons to be excited and happy about what occurred in the final home game of the season.

UT’s 24-10 win over Iowa State kept the Longhorns' Big 12 championship hopes alive, as Oklahoma State’s upset of West Virginia prior to UT’s game essentially gave the Longhorns control of their destiny... again.

In fact, the broadcast of the Oklahoma State upset over the Mountaineers was on the jumbotron while the Longhorns were in pregame warmups -- something that Texas head coach Tom Herman wasn’t exactly pleased with.

“Yeah, I got to talk to our video board operator about that, doing that right during pregame," said Herman. “That was tough to wrangle our guys in and focus on pregame. You talk about not worrying about the big picture and there it is in frigging high definition right there in front of you.”

But, the Longhorns responded well with a little extra motivation possibly, knowing that two wins will propel Texas into a championship game.

The Texas defense limited Iowa State to just 62 yards on 30 carries. The Cyclones top-notch running back, David Montgomery, missed the first half due to a suspension from partaking in a brawl against Baylor last week. Montgomery finished the game with 33 yards on 10 carries in his second half performance.

Offensively, UT nearly doubled up on Iowa State’s offensive production. The Longhorns produced 405 total yards of offense behind Sam Ehlinger’s 169 total yards and a pair of touchdowns, one passing and one rushing.

Speaking of Ehlinger, he suffered another injury to his throwing shoulder. Herman updated Ehlinger’s status after the game.

“Sam has an AC contusion right now, is what they're calling it,” said Herman. “Even Sam would tell you that it feels different than the last time. It was a direct blow from a face mask, where the last one he got driven into the ground and sprained the joint. So the X-rays were negative for a fracture and we're going to get a MRI tomorrow to assess where we go from there. But he even came up to me and said, coach, I can go, I can run, I can take a hit. Anything over about 10 or 15 yards I'm just really weak because of the pain. So I think that he knows it's a little bit different, but we'll see the magnitude of it when we get the results of an MRI and have a night to sleep on it.”

Backup UT quarterback Shane Buechele came off the bench for the first time since the Baylor game and had a perfect night passing. Buechele completed all ten of his pass attempts for 89 yards and connected with Lil’ Jordan Humphrey for a touchdown pass in the third quarter.

“(Buechele) prepares every day and nobody questions, in fact go the other way. Everybody's extremely confident in how well he prepares,” said Herman about Buechele.

When asked about the strong praise by his head coach and his fellow Longhorn teammates, Buechele said that’s his primary motivation.

“I love my teammates. That’s why I’m here. I love those guy and I do what I do for them,” Buechele said.

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