While Alabama, coming from parts unknown, continues to look a lot like Oklahoma’s last national championship team, even under direction of the coach who swiped the 2003 national title out of Sooner hands, this year’s Sooners continue a march of their own.

The latest impression, Saturday night’s 35-10 victory over TCU, is how this team offers just a little more each and every week.

The thumbnail sketch of the No. 1-in-waiting Sooners’ latest exhibition stops and starts with Sam Bradford and Manny Johnson, who combined for almost half of Bradford’s throwing yards, a Sooner record 212 of Bradford’s personal best 411.

It’s a great place to start and yet it’s only a start.

It doesn’t even tell Bradford’s full story.

Completing 19 of 34 tosses and incurring his season’s first four sacks, the Sooner signal-caller was under pressure a good part of the night. Though he won lopsidedly, he’s surely feeling Saturday night this Sunday morning … even on a night he threatened OU’s single-game passing mark of 429 yards.

That is, on the hard end of his most physical game to date, he had maybe his biggest game to date.

Nor does the Cliff’s Notes version of events represent the Sooner defense, which yielded 10 points to a team that had been averaging 43 and would only have yielded seven but for Aaron Brown’s 75-yard kick return.

The previous time out, at Washington, OU knew it had a question to answer about taking its best game on the road. The players even kicked Bob Stoops out of the pregame locker room to talk it over. Then went about emphatically answering the question.

Saturday, the Sooners entered question-mark free and on the verge of becoming the nation’s top-ranked team, yet played as though they’d dreamt up queries of their own just so they’d having something new to answer.

When it was over, they hadn’t stopped.

“As far as the second half, and the second quarter,” Bradford said, “there’s a lot of things that we’re going to have to come out and correct.”

The more you watch and the more you listen, the more it looks like that zero at the end of their season mark may stay put.

“Heck, the way things are going,” Stoops said, “you have to be at your best every week.”

Only four games into the season, this team seems to exceed it’s best every week. Or, at least, find something to do better than it’s ever done before.

On that count, Saturday night’s answer was big plays and almost all of them belonged to Bradford and Johnson.

So OU can hum like a machine or quick-strike a tough foe down. And, just in case Johnson hadn’t run wild after each of his five receptions, there was the defense making big plays of its own to keep the Horned Frogs from hopping.

Linebackers Ryan Reynolds, Kennan Clayton and Travis Lewis each had eight tackles and combined on three for losses. Lendy Holmes led with six solos and two fumble recoveries and Adrian Taylor, getting more snaps in DeMarcus Granger’s absence, finished with four tackles, one for a loss of 8.

Center Jon Cooper was stopped on his way out and wouldn’t quite go for the metaphysical response when asked if this team’s shaping up into something “special,” but he did notice something.

“We hadn’t faced much adversity yet and we faced some today. Especially as an offense; the defense really bailed us out. They played spectacularly,” he said. “As an offense, hopefully we can come out and have a great week of practice and kind of learn from what happened.”

In the end, he was just like Bradford: 35-10 over the nation’s 24th-ranked and most defensively stingy team still wasn’t enough; or it was only good enough as a vehicle to go get better.

“They are a great team,” TCU quarterback Andy Dalton said.

And with absolutely none of the arrogance a declaration like this might convey, while seemingly everybody (but Alabama) has proven more than mortal, they keep getting better.