Despite the two teams playing at different levels of collegiate football, Texas Tech’s first two opponents of the 2025 season share some similar qualities, and not in a positive sense.
We looked at the Red Raiders’ Week 1 opponent, FCS team Arkansas-Pine Bluff, and had trouble figuring out who was even on the team. There’s less mystery around Kent State’s roster, though the Golden Flashes have just as many question marks as the Golden Lions.
Let’s take a look at Kent State and see what it has to offer in Week 2:
Get to know Texas Tech football opponent: Kent State Golden Flashes
Matt Carney takes over as head coach at Kent State after Kenni Burns was fired in April for cause, the school alleging Burns repeatedly violated the terms of his employment contract. This includes how he used the company card.
Kent State was already going to be a project before Burns’ firing. The Golden Flashes went 1-23 in Burns’ two years at the helm, including a 21-game losing streak the team will take into the 2025 season.
In their 0-12 campaign in 2024, Kent State failed to reach 10 points in four of their final six games of the season and lost their final six contests of the season by a combined 177 points.
The Golden Flashes lost their top two receivers and top two rushers from last season, from an offense that generated just 233 yards of total offense per game. Devin Kargman (45-of-82, 432 yards, 3 TDs) has the most experience of the quarterbacks but Kent State also has CJ Montes, formerly of Fordham, on the roster.
Montes totaled just under 3,000 yards and an eye-popping 26-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio in 2023. He played just three games last year before a season-ending injury. Former Minnesota running back Jordan Nubin is expected to take over at running back after tallying 559 yards for the Golden Gophers in 2023.
One Kent State stat for Texas Tech football fans to know
As noted, Kent State has been really, really bad the last two years, and it seems unlikely the Golden Flashes will have a magical turnaround season with a brand new coach and players whose last success came two seasons ago.
During the team’s winless 2024 campaign, Kent State played three power-conference opponents in Pittsburgh, Tennessee and Penn State, losing those three games by a combined 182-24. All 24 points were scored against Pittsburgh.
Kent State’s last win over a team currently in a power conference came in 2012 when the Golden Flashes beat No. 15 Rutgers (then a member of the American Athletic Conference), 35-23. The last win over a team in a power conference at the time was a 23-14 win over Iowa State in 2007.
Final score prediction for Texas Tech football vs. Kent State
Texas Tech 49, Kent State 6: Much like the Arkansas-Pine Bluff game, this needs to be a full-throttle beatdown of an inferior team for the Red Raiders, and that’d be the case even if the Golden Flashes had any semblance of success the last two years, which they haven’t.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech football 2025 schedule preview: Get to know the Kent State Golden Flashes
Reporting by Nathan Giese, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
