Touch me, It's so easy to leave me, All alone with the memory, Of my days in the sun, If you touch me, You'll understand what happiness is.

All this thinking on the defense got us looking for some perspective. We ran the same exercise we did Tuesday, only this time we looked at the Tech offense of 2008 over the same period of games. Tech's offense was filled with inexperienced players last year much as Tech's front seven is this year. Just like this year's Defense, last years offense put together three good games and three bad games. The three good games were against Mississippi State, Duke, and Florida State, the three bad games were against Gardner-Webb, Clemson and Virginia. No amount of excuses can ever make up for the performance that unit gave against the Gardner-Webb Runnin' Rough Riders Soccer Academy. First the Good games

MSU-Duke-FSU

-1st---2nd---3rd---4th

2.83---4.13---3.44---1.89

and now the bad

Gardner-Webb-Clemson-Virginia

-1st---2nd---3rd---4th

1.75---1.89---0.00---1.11

In eight out of 12 quarters Tech's offense didn't score a point. Over that six game stretch Tech's offense averaged 22.8 points a game. That average would place Tech's offense 90th among scoring offense in the country this year, and our survey doesn't include the disaster that was last years UNC game. This year's defense gives up 24.7 points per game this year and ranks 67th nationally in points allowed.

What does all this mean? Probably nothing more than settle down and give this thing a chance to work itself out. Dave Wommack is not, as some sports talk callers insist, worse than Willy Martinez (89th in total defense). In fact the defense is going through a similar pattern to last years offense. Growth and maturation is not a linear process. In the last twelve quarters Tech's defense has played well for ten of them. Our team has three more chances to solidify the gains they've made, or just fall apart completely and turn us into Texas Tech East.