BIG 12 CONFERENCE FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME: BYU VS TEXAS TECH

December 6, 2025

Coy Eakin

Lee Hunter

Behren Morton

AT&T Stadium

Texas Tech Red Raiders

Postgame Press Conference

Texas Tech - 34, BYU - 7

Q. Coy, this one's for you. That catch you made in the first half, sprinting full speed, have to turn all the way around, land on your back, what was going through your mind on that play?

COY EAKIN: We have a play and just kind of executed it. The corner just kind of dropped. I had him beat, so I was like, Behren, is about to throw it. Just kind of make the play that comes to you.

One thing I want to say before I answer any questions is God is good and God is great all the time. I pray for deliverance.

Q. Lee, how would you compare the chemistry of this team under Coach McGuire compared to what you experienced in the prior season under Coach Malzahn?

LEE HUNTER: I don't want to do no comparison because I got respect for both head coaches. But a team this close, I feel we work very hard at practice, and it's still hard work, hard day to day. I just enjoy playing with these guys, great guys.

Real love, one of the best teams I've been a part of because of the work we put in daily. It's fun actually playing football here at Tech on both sides of the ball. I'm just thankful. I thank God for everything.

Q. Behren, Coach McGuire said that you and him in June told each other you would walk out of the stadium with the Big 12 Championship and take a picture. What do you remember about that conversation, and what was the feeling like?

BEHREN MORTON: Coach McGuire, early on this week, he told me we were going to do that. I knew exactly, we found each other, and we both got emotional.

Man, it's been a crazy, crazy ride. Spent all five years at Lubbock, at Texas Tech. I just love this university and everything it stands for. I think this town deserves championships to be brought back home. That's what we're going to do.

The standard is the standard. We're setting standard for now, but the standard is going to be upheld for sure.

Q. Behren, early on I felt like the offense wasn't quite going. But then Ben Roberts gets an interception and score right after that. How important was that play for you guys to get the offense going?

BEHREN MORTON: For sure, it was a big, big play. It really started off the momentum we needed for offense. We were moving the ball, but we weren't finishing drives.

Our defense is chaos. They're a great group of guys. I can't say enough about the defense for what they've done for the offense. It makes our job a lot easier. Ben played a phenomenal game. Very proud of him.

Q. Behren, you're one of the few guys really in the country that's been with the same program for five years. I know you haven't achieved everything. But to do this in your senior season with stuff off the field, with the injuries you've been through, what does that feel like?

BEHREN MORTON: Man, it's emotional for sure. I mean, my whole entire life has been Texas Tech. To bring back a championship that has never been brought home to Lubbock, that's something we can hang our hats on for the rest of our lives.

Man, it's a really cool achievement for sure. We're not done yet. There's still more ball to be played. So really proud of the team. I mean, it's a team effort. I can't say enough about this group of guys.

Q. Coy, when you were at Stephenville, you were most outstanding player in the championship game. Made a spectacular play in that one, made a spectacular play tonight. Is there some parallel there? Can you describe kind of the play from Stephenville?

COY EAKIN: Kind of the same offense, but I don't really know. It was just kind of you step in somewhere and you feel comfortable. That's kind of how it was tonight. I thought we all felt comfortable tonight. We played like it.

That was just my time to make a play that came to me. It could have been anybody's, but it was just that time.

Q. Lee, obviously you had plenty of options this summer, but this staff convinced you that you could compete for a Big 12 Championship here. When did you start to believe that that was really reality, and what is it like being here now?

LEE HUNTER: When I came down here to Lubbock, it was just the facility was crazy and the coaches was just great. As I got in the locker room, when you meet people, some people put on, but when I actually got here, they was who they say they was. When I got in the locker room, they just said to me, hop on. I'm just blessed. I came to the perfect situation at the right time. I'm thankful.

I've got a little girl. I've got another one on the way. It's just like I'm thankful. I'm blessed. I love these guys. These guys work hard every day, and they stuck with me for life. Coach McGuire do a great job of instilling hard work in us day to day basically.

It's not over. We've still got more to get. We've got a great football team, but I'm thankful. If I can say this, I'm blessed and I'm thankful. I did it for my teammates and my family and everybody who loves this organization. I'm thankful for Lubbock. I love you boys. You're stuck with me for life.

Q. There's a lot of talk around the state of who's the state flagship university. Obviously you guys right now are the only team that has clinched a CFP spot. To the next generation of student-athletes that are competing in high school 6A or 1A through 6A championships here next week, they're making decisions of where they want to go. What can you guys say about the culture at Lubbock? I know you guys have got Cody Campbell. He was here in the room a little bit ago. What do you guys say about the culture of Texas Tech? Why should they come? There's so much competition in Texas. What makes you guys stand out?

BEHREN MORTON: I think it's our coach, our leader for sure. Coach McGuire, he makes the ball roll. But all the guys, 120 of us, we trust Coach McGuire. I'd do anything for that man. He's a very special guy for me. Not just for me, but for the whole team. President Schovanec back there too.

It means so much. The community of Lubbock is a really, really special place that people could see. Maybe it's not wherever Dallas is or whatever, but Lubbock is a really, really special place, and there's really special people there.

I'm going to have relationships the rest of my life from Lubbock. I hope my kids get to go to Texas Tech. I hope my son gets to play for Coach McGuire. To bring back the standard of bringing back championships to Lubbock, it means the world to me.

COY EAKIN: I'll say this. I committed to Joey as a walk-on, and I had offers like other places. He said, as soon as you get here, I'm going to get you an offer as soon as I can get it to you. He held his word, and he's loved me every day since. Everybody's had bad practices or whatever, but he's not going to change up on you.

If you want to commit to a coach that's going to love you every single day and actually care about you, this is the place to be. I went to Stephenville obviously, and that's a football town. If you play high school football there, everybody's going to know your name. You walk in the Whattaburger in Lubbock, there's going to be people wanting to have your autograph and stuff. It's not like you're just another guy there. It's like you're on the football team? We're all around you. Community is going to be all around you in Lubbock.

Q. For all three of you, what does earning this bye mean to you and the time that you're going to be able to get? What's your message of thanks to the coaches that have helped you along the way to this Big 12 Championship?

BEHREN MORTON: For me, I battled with injuries really my whole entire career. Mike Ramirez and his staff have done a phenomenal job. Man, I can't say enough. It was great to hug him after the game. We've waited for this moment for a long time.

There's so many good people in Lubbock, Mike and the training staff, but also the coaches. We had a great game plan. We have for the last 12 weeks, 13 weeks now. I really can't say enough about the people and the facility. It's a blessing to go to our facility every day. I don't dread going up there at all. The more time that I get to spend up there, the happier I am.

Q. For all three, how has the defense made you all better players? Not just obviously with what they bring to the table, but how have they held you accountable and just made you better in your time at Texas Tech?

LEE HUNTER: For the defense, just the players really. It started with J-Rod, Coach Shiel, Coach Wood, all the staff. They just instill hard work in you. You learn how to work hard, and the guys around you working hard on a day-to-day basis. It just becomes like a habit. Keep doing it and doing it and doing it. We've got some hard working guys on this defense.

COY EAKIN: It really goes back to like summer. There's leaders in every single group. It doesn't matter if you're skill, defense, DBs, there's going to be a leader there, and everyone is held up to a standard.

Like DeMarcus Ware said to us last night, iron sharpens iron. It really was all year iron sharpens iron. Ben had a great game. He's my dog. But he's been around Jacob Rodriguez and doing exactly what he does every single day and trying to outperform, and his day finally came. Iron sharpens iron, and everybody gets better together.

Q. This question is for Lee. Early on in the game, it looked like BYU's game plan literally on offense was, okay, strength of your defense is going to be due to the line. Linebackers up the middle. They're going to go outside and run a lot of screens. What did Coach Wood do to adjust the game plan to disrupt what they were doing on offense and shut everything down?

LEE HUNTER: The stuff that we do every week. Just went in the locker room and coached us harder. On the sidelines they coached us harder. He didn't change nothing up. He stuck with his game plan, and we executed for him.

Q. For all three, you walk in there, you see all that red. Could you all three just give me some emotion real quick, what it was like?

BEHREN MORTON: We knew that playing in the DFW area with the fan base that we have out here, we knew it was going to be rocking. Man, it was awesome. 85,000 people, the majority of them wearing red, it's a great feeling. It kind of feels like a home game.

Can't say enough for how we travel as a fan base too, but it's really comforting having a fan base like us.

COY EAKIN: It feels like a home game, instantly, especially when a good play for us happens, the crowd shock was crazy.

Q. State championship game in high school and today, you played here twice or more than twice?

COY EAKIN: I played here twice.

Q. Six touchdowns in two games. You kind of alluded to it earlier. Since you were not big-time recruit, how much have you thought about how maybe close you came to not getting to play for Texas Tech over the years?

COY EAKIN: I didn't get a single offer other than a small D-I until after my senior season. It was kind of delayed. You've got to trust God in those situations, and it came about. Let's say that, now I look back on it, God works in mysterious ways. Let's say I had offers going into my senior year, at the time, I don't know if I would have picked Tech, and this is a place I love.

As soon as I stepped on campus, I was like, mom, this is exactly where I need to be. Everything worked out how it needed to go. McGuire instilled in us early on like, hey, we're going to go win it one day, and we kind of just bought in. It's just a blessing to play here in general.

Q. Lee, being from the 251, Mobile, and coming to play in AT&T, how does it feel?

LEE HUNTER: I'm just blessed to have this opportunity. Like, I'm thankful. I don't really know what to say.

Q. You guys have various, different backgrounds. Behren being here five years, Lee coming in this past off-season. What have you seen from a cohesion standpoint, on everybody putting money aside and ego aside, getting on the same page about winning a National Championship?

BEHREN MORTON: That's what Coach McGuire preached. He told me this off-season, we're going to go get some guys, and we're going to go win this thing. When he got hired back four years ago, he said, Behren, just trust me. Stick with me and trust me. And I have ever since that day.

When he said we're going to go get these guys, I said, let's go, Coach, let's build this culture and the standard for Texas Tech. We all trusted him. Lee trusted him. Mello trusted him. Brice Pollock trusted him. The list continues of guys that came in and bought in. There was no selfish, no, well, I'm getting this amount of money; I've got one year left, this season is about me. None of that. That has not been at all in the locker room.

I think that's what really, really makes us click is because we don't have guys like that on the team. Guys just want to win football games at the end of the day, and that's what we've been doing.

Q. With your experience in Lubbock, Texas, for somebody who's never been to Lubbock, Texas, describe it in one word if you had to tell somebody what Lubbock's meant to you.

LEE HUNTER: Football.

BEHREN MORTON: Rowdy.

COY EAKIN: I'd say rowdy, too.

Q. Coy, obviously there's been so much talk again of the guys who came in and all that sort of stuff. For somebody like you, who was a developmental guy, wasn't a scholarship player coming in, how did the team come together? How did guys like you, who weren't necessarily promised a lot to come here, handle that, and how has this been able to become such a cohesive team?

COY EAKIN: First of all, if you put in the work, it's going to pay off. It didn't pay off for me until my final game senior year. Same thing here, it's kind of paying off towards the end of my career here at Texas Tech.

On the cohesive part, just like Behren said, there's a lot of money being thrown around or whatever, but it doesn't feel like that at all. We walk in, and it doesn't matter how much you make. If you don't make a dime or if you make the most on the team, we're all happy someone scores. It doesn't matter who it is. The player doesn't care who makes it.

We're all there for each other. C.D. and Reggie, if they go have a game, I'm hyped for them, you know what I'm saying? If it's J'Koby's game, I'm hyped for him. It's never been jealousy or envy of anybody else. We have one goal, and at the end of the day, it's to go win football games. If we can do that, we're all happy.

THE MODERATOR: Coy, we get to present to you the All-State Most Outstanding Offensive Player.

Congratulations. We'll see you in the college football playoffs.