By John Shinn
For 10 games, Oklahoma showed signs it was capable of being the dominant team it hoped it would be all the way back in August.
There were games Adrian Peterson ran wild, but a midseason high-ankle sprain limited what he could do. There were games OU’s defense dominated, but others included momentary lapses that came at a high cost.
Saturday at Owen Field, it all came together in the Sooners’ 42-14 Bedlam romp over Oklahoma State.
The statistics were even more one-sided than the score.
OU rolled up 560 yards of total offense with Adrian Peterson rushing for 237 and Rhett Bomar throwing for 206 and three touchdowns.
It was the fourth straight game Peterson had rushed for at least 100 yards.
“He is amazing,” OU coach Bob Stoops said. “He makes great cuts and has incredible acceleration and bursts. He has great power and will pick up 6 or 8 yards on a run when somebody else would only pick up 1 or 2. It’s fun watching him.”
Bomar’s progression was evident as well. After struggling through the early part of the season along with a young receiving corps, he finished the regular season by throwing for more than 200 yards in four of his last six games.
Offensive coordinator Chuck Long made no attempt to hide his elation.
“We’re rising at the right time,” he said. “That’s was as good a performance as we’ve had all year.”
Defensively, the Sooners dominated from the opening kick until the final whistle. OSU only picked up seven first downs and averaged 2.35 yards per snap.
OU certainly looked like a better team than the 7-4 record it concluded the regular season with. And the Sooners certainly felt like an elite team after Saturday’s victory.
“We have a lot of talent on this team,” defensive tackle Dusty Dvoracek said. “We’re just young. We have guys who haven’t played before, and we just needed to get them more snaps.
“If you look at Game 1 to Game 11, it speaks marvels for this team and how much we’ve improved. We’ve improved week in and week out. Next year’s team will have a lot of guys coming back, and they’ll be tough. There’s a lot of talent on this team. The older guys knew that, and we knew we just had to keep pushing.”
That push helped OU overcome losing two of its first three games and three of its first five.
The Sooners will enter postseason play having won five of their last six games. Had one of two disputed calls against Texas Tech gone OU’s way, the Sooners would be on a six-game winning streak.
However, there was no crying over that Saturday night. All the Sooners were thinking about was what’s next.
“We finished strong, and we’re hoping to get that bowl win to take us into next year,” Bomar said.
Bowl bids will be announced in six days and OU’s possible bowl destinations are locked into either the Holiday Bowl in San Diego or the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio.
It’s a far cry from September when even a winning record looked like a very tall order.
“This team could have gone in another direction, but they never did,” Stoops said. “They kept their character, their discipline and their leadership and fought through it. They ended the year in a good position.”
John Shinn366-3536jshinn@normantranscript.com
