John Shinn
Oklahoma linebacker Zach Latimer looked up at Sooner fans tucked into the southeast corner of Boone Pickens Stadium and said what everyone was feeling.
“Let’s go to Kansas City!” he yelled on his way to the locker room following OU’s 27-21 victory over Oklahoma State Saturday.
Few could hear him, though. Chants of “B-C-S” drowned out just about anything else being uttered.
Both Latimer’s words and the fans’ chant pretty much summed up what’s next for the Big 12 South champions.
OU (10-2, 7-1 Big 12) faces Big 12 North winner Nebraska (9-3, 6-2) at 7 p.m. Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., in the Big 12 championship game.
The winner gets the conference crown and an automatic berth in the Fiesta Bowl.
It’s been an incredible about-face for an OU team that dealt with the preseason dismissal of its starting quarterback and the disappointment of the blown call and instant replay blunder resulting in a 34-33 loss to Oregon. That doesn’t even include Adrian Peterson missing the second half of the regular season with a broken collarbone.
Few predicted the Sooners would be preparing to play in the conference title game for the fifth time in seven seasons.
“Everybody wrote the season off when Adrian got hurt,” OU coach Bob Stoops said. “You guys remember all the talk and articles and sarcasm. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.”
Doom and gloom was certainly in the forecast.
Peterson’s injury came a week after a 28-10 loss to Texas. The winner of the Red River Shootout had represented the Big 12 South in the conference title game six of the last seven years.
But even after the loss to the Longhorns and the loss of Peterson, the Sooners kept plugging away.
The Bedlam victory was OU’s seventh straight and sixth without the former Heisman Trophy runner-up. Just about all of them came in similar fashion.
The Sooners pounded with Allen Patrick, Chris Brown and Jacob Gutierrez and relied heavily on a defense which has been dominant in the season’s second half.
“Everybody’s playing together,” Patrick said after rushing for 163 yards against OSU. “Everybody’s going to go in and do their job.”
The Sooners have gone about their tasks with machine-like precession over the last seven games.
During that time, they’ve risen from No. 22 to where they currently reside, in tie for No. 8 with Arkansas.
“We tried to improve every week and everyone started coming together real well,” defensive end C.J. Ah You said. “We’ve just been playing hard.”
Getting the Longhorns to lose their last two regular-season games and winning Bedlam for the fourth straight year removed the final obstacles.
But OU hopes the satisfaction of reaching the Big 12 title game isn’t the final reward. Stoops likes to say his program gauges success by championships.
None have been won quite yet. But there’s a big trophy waiting for either the Sooners or the Cornhuskers.
“We’re not just excited to go to the game,” Stoops said. “We need to win the game.”
John Shinn366-3536jshinn@normantranscript.com
