The Astrodome was brought back to life last night in the inaugural galleryfurniture.com Bowl. Texas Tech and East Carolina both came in with high hopes of winning a shootout. The game started with Texas Tech kicking off in a midst of tortillas to ECU. That ended up being the high point in the game for Tech. East Carolina quickly scored and came out with a 6-0 lead because of a blocked extra point. Then immediately with an onside kick the Pirates were able to take the crowd out of the game. However, the Tech defense held and got the ball back. Texas Tech then went 3 and out on their possession, and on the punt return Keith Stokes ran it back 71 yards to up the Pirate lead to 13-0. By the time the first quarter ended, East Carolina had a 20-0 lead and Texas Tech only had a few yards of offense to its credit.

East Carolina then opened the second quarter with a 44-yard touchdown pass to Derrick Collier making it 27-0. By this time, it was readily apparent that Texas Tech did not properly prepare for this game. The offensive line was not providing any pass protection or run blocking. The defensive line had no penetration and the option was not being defended properly. While listening to the radio broadcast the sideline reporter, John Granato, stated that he heard the ECU players saying that they knew what the Tech audibles were. Speaking of Granato, it was funny during the game watching him go around the sidelines with his lackey trailing him from behind. At one point in the second quarter, he started yelling at her because she wasn't at his side. Texas Tech at the time was running a no huddle offense with Kliff Kingsbury shouting out the indicators for the play at the line of scrimmage.

Texas Tech at the end of the first half put up a touchdown to make the score 34-7 going into halftime. Then something I have never seen before happened at the end of the half. The halftime was the standard 20 minutes with the bands performing as entertainment. With about 2 minutes left on the clock ECU comes out of the locker room and starts warming up. Then about a minute later, half of Texas Tech comes out of the locker room. As they trickle onto the field, the 20 minutes expire, and ECU sets up to kickoff. The Tech sideline then starts becoming very chaotic. The special teams coach is screaming his head off trying to get his return team ready. After waiting about another 2 minutes it, looks like the third quarter will start. Wrong. Just as ECU is going to kickoff about 20 more Tech players come running out of the tunnel with coaches in tow. The referee catches it and stops the play before it starts. It looked like keystone cops out there with Tech completely disorganized and unprepared.

Texas Tech recovers after the kickoff snafu to start the second half with a quick touchdown two minutes into the half. ECU then was able to kill the rest of the quarter with two field goals, with the Red Raider offense performing sporadically in the quarter.

In the fourth quarter East Carolina played ball control as the Tech offense inched closer to making the comeback. Cole Roberts scored a quick touchdown as the quarter started, and the Derrick Dorris scored with 6:44 left in the game. After the Dorris touchdown Tech went for two to cut the deficit to 11. However, the pass failed and that ended the scoring in the inaugural galleryfurniture.com Bowl.

Throughout the game, East Carolina was able to get pressure on QB, Kliff Kingsbury with only sending 4 rushers. The Texas Tech lines lost the battle of the trenches, the defense couldn't wrap anyone up, and the offense looked like it was lost without a gameplan.

East Carolina came in guns blazing and blew Texas Tech away. They will go back to Greenville with a boost for 2001 while Texas Tech goes back to Lubbock wondering what went wrong in Mike Leach's first season and bowl game.