Eric Morris knew this was coming. The Oklahoma State head coach was getting questions about it in July at Big 12 Media Days.

The Cowboys head coach has deep roots at Texas Tech. He was born in Littlefield, Texas, played his high school football at Shallowater, near Lubbock. He squeezed onto the Texas Tech roster as a wide receiver and he played four seasons for Leach, earning second-team All-Big 12 for punt return honors in his final season.

It didn’t end there. He worked his way back to Texas Tech as the program’s wide receivers coach and offensive coordinator 2013-17, guiding the rise of quarterback Patrick Mahomes before heading to Incarnate Word to be a head coach.

So, yeah, it’s kind of a big deal — even if Morris doesn’t want it to be.

Eric Morris on Facing His Alma Mater

Morris clearly wants to think about anything other than the connections — at least for this week, even as he was politely answering questions on Tuesday.

“I think anytime you try to make anything about yourself or the past, bad things happen to you,” Morris said.

During his playing days, Morris was part of the “I’m a Man, I’m 40” game, the Texas Tech-Oklahoma State showdown in 2007 that led then-Cowboys head coach Mike Gundy to direct his ire at The Oklahoman’s Jenni Carlson about an article written earlier that week.

So Morris knows what Boone Pickens Stadium is like for a big night game, like the one that will be played on Saturday. The 8:30 p.m. showdown is now a ranked game after the Cowboys (6-3, 4-2 in Big 12) into the College Football Playoff Top 25 at No. 25. Texas Tech is No. 12.

“There was a lot going on that game,” Morris said of the game that OSU won, 49-45.

The connections still run deep in Lubbock for Morris. He played with Red Raiders mega-booster Cody Campbell, who was a senior when Morris was a freshman. Texas Tech offensive coordinator Mack Leftwich was Morris’ graduate assistant at Incarnate Word and runs the same offense as Morris, which is the same offense that Leach ran when Morris played for him.

He goes back with Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire, who was a Texas high school head coach at Cedar Hill when Morris was the OC at Tech. He called offensive line coach Clay McGuire — who is not related to Joey McGuire — his “best friend” and talks to him nearly every day. Wide receivers coach Justin Johnson played for Morris when he was an assistant coach at Houston. Morris and Tech cornerbacks coach Darcel McBath played together in college.

The whole thing feels like a family reunion — if the stakes weren’t so high.

The Red Raiders (8-1, 5-1 in Big 12) enters the game in control of its own destiny in the Big 12 race. If Texas Tech wins out, they’ll reach the Big 12 Championship game for the second straight year and, most likely, play Utah.

Oklahoma State needs the win to keep its flimsy hopes of reaching the Big 12 Championship game alive. Beating the Red Raiders gives his Cowboys a valuable tiebreaker.

Morris would much rather focus on that than the past, even if that past — including Leach — helped make him the coach that he is.

“Mike Leach used to say the older you get, you only remember the good things,” Morris said. “That's what sticks in your memory all the time, right?”

Morris wants to remember something really good after Saturday’s game.