Another crash landing

John Shinn

MIAMI — Oklahoma thought this was the year when everything came together in January. It had run the marathon of the season, believing it would finally peak at the end.

Thursday night at Dolphin Stadium, another season came crashing down with a 24-14 loss to Florida in the BCS national championship game.

The loss wouldn’t be so hard to stomach if it didn’t follow a familiar pattern to a tee.

The Sooners, for the third straight season, waited until the end to do the things they hadn’t done all season.

“We didn’t end up finishing like we talked about all week,” defensive tackle Gerald McCoy said.

All year would be more like it.

All year long OU had been three things:

• The best red zone team in college football.

• The most explosive offense in the game.

• A team with a shaky defense capable of giving up a lot of yards and points.

The Sooners were none of those things Thursday night.

Florida (13-1) won the game in the red zone. It scored on every trip. Quarterback Tim Tebow threw for 231 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He also rushed for 109.

The Sooners (12-2) couldn’t stop the Gators once they got inside the 20. All 24 of their points came inside the red zone.

“We had some opportunities to make a difference in the first half, and came up short,” OU coach Bob Stoops said.

Twice OU had the ball inside of Florida’s 6-yard line and didn’t come away with a single point. Chris Brown, who rushed for 110 yards, was stuffed on a fourth-and-goal from the Gator 1 midway through the second half. Sam Bradford, who threw for 256 yards and a pair of touchdown passes to Jermaine Gresham, was picked off late in the second quarter from the Florida 6.

The game was tied 7-7 at halftime. Players said it wasn’t demoralizing to be tied at halftime because of the missed opportunities.

“I thought our mindset going into the second half was as good as it has been all year,” Bradford said. “We knew we had 30 minutes left and it was a tie ballgame and we still had a chance to win the national championship.”

But the high-powered offense Bradford engineered all season never made it to Miami. Florida backed up its brash talk about the supremacy of SEC defense, holding the Sooners to a season-low 363 total yards.

The only reason the Sooners were in it until the final minutes was their defense showed up ready to play. It banged around Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and set up scoring opportunities.

After all, it held the Gators to 24 points (25 fewer than their average) and twice intercepted the 2007 Heisman winner inside the 50 yard line.

“I feel we played well on defense,” defensive tackle Gerald McCoy said.

OU could have been better on third down. The Gators were 12-for-17 converting them. But the Sooners were in the game and had a great shot at winning it if their offense had gotten on track.

It didn’t. Florida’s did.

The game was billed as a showdown between the last two Heisman Trophy winners.

Tebow, the 2007 winner, got the best of Bradford, who won it this season, because he was the one who marched his team down the field for the go-ahead field goal early in the fourth quarter and the game-sealing 4-yard touchdown pass to David Nelson with 3 minutes left in the game.

“It came down to who could win it in the fourth (quarter),” OU middle linebacker Mike Balogun said. “They made more plays than us and that’s basically what it boils down to.”

For the fifth time in the last six years, the Sooners walked off another NFL stadium after losing another BCS bowl game. Thursday’s stings more because it was the national championship game.

The score was different, but it mirrored the first four. Once again OU made the mistakes it avoided all year on the last night of the season.

John Shinn

366-3536

jshinn@normantranscript.com