This time, Sooners lucky

Clay Horning

Count Oklahoma among the lucky.

Put the Sooners on the good list, too.

But they’re lucky first. Or, better put, they might finish first because they’re lucky. Look no further than Saturday night at Owen Field for the required evidence.

Is Missouri OU’s superior?

No, the Sooners beat the Tigers. But they weren’t the only ones. The Tigers beat the Tigers, too.

“It was kind of an evening of mistakes,” said Missouri coach Gary Pinkel and he should know.

The final score was 41-31 and with everything else that’s happened in this twilight zone of a college football season OU might be on the inside track to the national championship game.

I’d vote South Florida No. 1. Find me two better wins than at Auburn and against West Virginia among the ranks of the unbeaten. But among the one-time losers, OU has to be right there with LSU and that’s very close.

Which only magnifies how lucky this team’s been.

It may not look like it.

Missouri took its only lead with 1:30 to play in the third quarter when Jimmy Jackson rumbled in from 4 yards and, just like that, stunned 85,041 into silence.

But, the drive chart would later prove, OU responded by going 66 yards and taking the lead for good when Chris Brown, the best running back for either team this day, went in from a yard.

Then Curtis Lofton brought back a fumble.

Then another turnover and another touchdown and darn if it didn’t look like one more rout for the home team but for the fact Charlie Brown and Lucy would have had better luck trying to kick a point after. And Missouri went on one more drive.

But the box score says OU responded.

“It’s good to step up in the fourth quarter,” Bob Stoops said.

And still, the Sooners were lucky.

OU was the beneficiary of four turnovers, Missouri of two and that’s a start but there’s more. One of those turnovers the Tigers got came on Juaquin Iglesias’ kick return a moment after Jeremy Maclin’s 10-yard dash brought Missouri within 23-17.

The very next play, Chase Daniel threw to a wide open Derrick Washington who promptly dropped a certain 46-yard touchdown. The Tigers scored seven snaps later but what if it had been 14 points on consecutive snaps? What then?

Maybe the Sooners don’t recover.

That’s one.

DeMarco Murray managed not to fumble his next return and set the Sooners up at their own 34.

Sam Bradford had another great day, completing 24 of 34 passes for 266 yards and two scores, but in the fourth quarter, trailing by a point because Garrett Hartley can’t kick any more, the redshirt freshman quarterback had to be great and was for all but one play. That was the play, facing first-and-10 at the Missouri 33, he overthrew Manuel Johnson but not Tiger safety Cornelius Brown who dropped the ball like it was on fire.

That’s two.

Two gifts OU may not win without.

Afterward, getting the home team radio glad-hand treatment from color-man and Sooner director of football operations Merv Johnson, Stoops appeared unsure what to do with the old offensive line coach’s congratulations.

“All wins are good,” Stoops said.

But his heart wasn’t in it. It was better than the alternative, not much else.

Eventually, the coach who could never have dreamed he’d be right back in the thick of the national-title picture just two weeks after losing in the mountains came clean.

“We need to do a better job coaching and they need to do a better job listening and executing,” he said.

Later, he reminded everybody of OU’s eight-year trend of getting better as the season progressed, only to point out it’s not happening in season nine. At least not like it should be happening.

“So many times the media or fans want to put you in some great place, but we’re not there yet,” Stoops said. “We’re used to making more improvement by this time during the year.”

Or, at the least, not counting on two tremendous strokes of luck to get past Missouri in Norman, no matter how good the Tigers are this or any season.

As he left the room, Stoops took a moment for some stragglers who had one more question, maybe two.

OU’s right back in the middle of this crazy season, how about that?

“If we don’t get better,” he said, “we don’t have a chance.”

Clay Horning

366-3526

cfhorning@normantranscript.com