On Friday, Washington State will play Houston in a game that connects back to Lubbock, Texas, at the turn of the century. It will be a matchup between mentor and protégé, between Mike Leach and Dana Holgorsen, the coach who among the dozens of Leach assistants in the past 20 years seems to be most like the godfather of the Air Raid in personality.



Holgorsen played wide receiver under Leach, who was the offensive coordinator at Iowa Wesleyan on Hal Mumme’s staff. Holgorsen also was the last assistant coach Leach officially hired in his first season as a head coach on the 2000 Texas Tech staff. “He’s like Mike Jr.,” said SMU head coach Sonny Dykes, Leach’s first receivers coach at Tech. “I used to call him Little Leach all the time. It’d piss him off. They have the same cadence. The older Dana gets, the more he morphs into Mike. Don’t tell him that. He’ll get pissed off, but it’s...