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Big 12
It’s official: Oklahoma and Florida will play for the BCS national championship.
The Sooners are headed back to the beach.
OU moved to No. 1 in the BCS rankings Sunday night, a day after pummeling Big 12 North champion Missouri in the Big 12 Championship in Kansas City. The Sooners will be back in sunny South Beach for the BCS National Championship on Jan. 8, the third time in a row OU has been in the championship game when it has taken place in Miami.
OU’s win in Kansas City was its third straight Big 12 Championship. No other program has won two in a row in the Big 12 conference.
“I’m just happy for our program,” head coach Bob Stoops said. “Again, I thanked everybody in the locker room that’s associated with our program.”
When the Sooners lost the Red River Rivalry game to Texas in October, few would have thought it possible OU would conclude its season with a national championship game appearance.
“You have to earn it every time, and this team has persevered through a lot,” Stoops said. “We’ve fought through a lot of injuries. Again, like I said, today we fought through another one.”
On the opening kickoff of Saturday’s game, sophomore running back DeMarco Murray was undercut, and missed the rest of the game with a bruised knee.
For the first 13 minutes of the game, it looked like a defensive struggle, as the Sooners only put up a field goal from redshirt freshman Jimmy Stevens.
But late in the first quarter, the Sooners got their offense rolling when junior running back Chris Brown capped off an eight-play, 90-yard drive with a 4-yard touchdown run.
“I’m the biggest Chris Brown fan there is,” Stoops said. “That guy is a great player.”
Missouri fired back when senior quarterback Chase Daniel found star sophomore wide-out Jeremy Maclin for a 27-yard touchdown.
But that was all the scoring the Tigers could muster for most of the game.
In fact, that was the only time Maclin would find the end zone.
The Sooner defense held him in check throughout the contest, limiting him to 46 yards and one touchdown.
“You’ve got to give credit to the front seven,” junior cornerback Brian Jackson said. “We can’t get anything without them. We worked all week basically on just focusing on making plays. I think Maclin’s a great receiver, and everybody has their day, and I’m just glad that we came out and performed well.”
The Sooners scored 34 unanswered points after Maclin scored early in the second quarter.
A pair of touchdown passes from sophomore quarterback Sam Bradford to Iglesias, a 12-yard touchdown run by junior running back Mossis Madu and another touchdown run by Brown, this time for 6 yards, made it 38-7 at the half.
“We have so many different weapons on offense that I think it’s really hard for a defense to double cover one guy, because if they do that they’re going to leave one-on-one matches with other guys,” Bradford said. “So, I think tonight we just did a great job of getting open and taking advantage of it.”
The Sooners tacked on a field goal to make it 41-7 before Daniel finally found another receiver for the Tigers’ second touchdown.
Junior wide receiver Tommy Saunders caught the 9-yard touchdown pass from Daniel.
But the Sooners weren’t done scoring yet. In fact, they had a little ways to go.
Madu sprinted in for his second score of the day, a 1-yard touchdown run to make it 48-14.
After Missouri’s Daniel found senior tight end Chase Coffman for an 8-yard touchdown pass, the Sooners prepared to make history.
Brown ran in for the score from 6 yards out, and Madu officially made OU the first team in college football history to score 60 points in five consecutive games when he broke a 37-yard touchdown run with under four minutes left.
“It’s pretty amazing,” Stoops said. “Again, I credit Kevin Wilson, our offensive coordinator, and all our offensive coaches, and these players. Coaches have done a great job of using all of them, spreading them out and making people defend all of them. And if you try and take one of them away, there’s two or three or four others that can equally hurt you.”
Brown and Madu each finished with more than 100 yards on the ground and three touchdowns. Brown had 122 — putting him above the 1,000-yard mark on the season — and Madu had 114.
The Sooners dominated all offensive categories, outgaining the Tigers 627 to 354 yards and managing 39 first downs to Missouri’s 20, while converting all nine of their red zone chances to points on the board — seven for touchdowns.
Bradford was 34-for-49 for 384 yards and two touchdowns.
When OU takes the field in Miami against Florida, it will try to avenge its last two national championship losses — to LSU in the 2004 Sugar Bowl and to USC in the 2005 Orange Bowl.
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dbh 3 years, 5 months ago
What a year for Sooner Fans! Congratulations to all the coaches and players on another very successful football season.
I only want the team to stay focused and play up to their potential for one more game. The Big one in Miami!! Boomer Sooner. Merry Christmas Sooners.