After being selected as the No. 1 team by the BCS, OU will travel to Missouri and take on the No. 11 Tigers on Saturday with ESPN GameDay in tow.
The Sooners struggled on the road last season. Although the wins have not been pretty on the road this year, the team’s reemphasized that wins are wins.
The Sooners have beaten Missouri several times in the past few seasons when both were in the top 25, including marquee wins on the road. In fact, in 2007, OU beat Missouri twice: once in Norman and once in the Big 12 Championship.
Most recently, OU embarrassed Missouri 62-21 in the Big 12 Championship, giving the Sooners the final bump over Texas into the national championship.
“Some of the coaches have told us that [the Tigers] really want to play us and they have us circled, that they remember what we did to them in ‘08,” sophomore center Ben Habern said. “They’re obviously frustrated with that, and they want to come out and play hard. We’re going to do the same thing.”
So far, OU has been perfect on the road with wins at Cincinnati and a win over the Longhorns at a neutral site, in part because the team has limited its turnovers this year, Habern said.
“We really struggled on the road with turnovers and penalties and getting off schedule with our offense (last year), and that’s one thing we’ve definitely improved,” said Habern. “We don’t have the turnovers we had last year against Nebraska, we don’t have those four or five turnovers on road games. So that’s huge, that’s really important.”
Penalties plagued the offensive line last season. However, OU has not been penalized this year for holding or a false start since the second quarter of the Air Force game.
“If we can get our offense going on first and second down, then we can get our tempo going and catch the defense off guard,” Habern said.
The OU coaches have emphasized this week the Sooners’ win streak against Missouri and reminded the players of the team’s past success against the Tigers, freshman running back Roy Finch said.
Coach Bob Stoops is 6-0 against the Tigers in his career, and OU has won 19 of 20 meetings with the Tigers over history.
“Coach Stoops emphasizes the winning streak against all the teams that we are going to be playing,” Finch said. “He just wants us to have a swagger and the confidence to go out there and play our game.”
Sophomore quarterback Landry Jones has displayed more swagger and confidence over the past several games, especially last week against Iowa State where he completed 30 of 34 passes and broke an OU record for highest completion percentage with 25 or more attempts.
His confidence, he said, has come from more experience and harder work in practice, both of which are going to be important if the Sooners want to keep avoiding last year’s road troubles and stay composed in front of the opposition’s crowds.
“As you mature as a quarterback, you have to start blocking that stuff out,” Jones said. “I went to Nebraska and the crowd was going crazy and I could barely communicate, but this year going on the road I’ve felt like as an offense, we’ve been able to calm ourselves down and play in hostile environments. We’re still learning, and it’s going to be a huge challenge going up there.”
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
DanimalRC 1 year, 7 months ago
“Coach Stoops emphasizes the winning streak against all the teams that we are going to be playing,” Finch said. “He just wants us to have a swagger and the confidence to go out there and play our game.”
--Anyone else think it's funny that Coach Stoops roundly denies the importance of any streak or past performance against a particular team during his press conferences but is clearly pushing its importance to the players?? Perhaps the difference is that the COACHES don't change their thinking/ strategy based on past records against a team but they want the PLAYERS to carry "a swagger and the confidence" that Finch is talking about.