Last year's loss to Pokes still painful for OU

Sports

Related Photos

OSU fans celebrate the final seconds of the Cowboys' 44-10 win over Oklahoma last season. (Staff Photo by BONNIE VCULEK)

Discussion

November 20, 2012

Last year's loss to Pokes still painful for OU

By John Shinn, CNHI News Service CNHI The Enid News and Eagle Tue Nov 20, 2012, 11:12 PM CST

NORMAN, Okla. — The last time Oklahoma met Oklahoma State, just getting back to the locker room was overwhelming for the Sooners. After the 44-10 loss to the Cowboys on Dec. 3, 2011, thousands of fans swarmed the Boone Pickens Stadium turf.

The insult of having your in-state rival roll over you like a dump truck in a game that decided the Big 12 championship was bad enough. Having to work your way through the celebration to go home just added insult to injury.

“If I wasn’t a member at OU, it’s pretty cool the fans are rushing the field,” OU defensive end David King said. “But when you’re actually playing in the game and you put all your heart and soul into trying to win the game and you lose, and the fans rush it, it’s kinda hard to hold back from just knocking a guy down. But you’ve gotta refrain from it, and just know that’s part of college football.”

The Sooners have experienced memories like that many times in road losses. Saturday’s Bedlam meeting will mark the final home game for a senior class that endured the fans storming the field several times since they arrived in the Norman.

It happened in Stillwater and at Baylor last season. They were engulfed by fans when they lost at Missouri in 2009. When OU loses, it’s generally a pretty big upset.

However, its loss to the Cowboys last season wasn’t an upset. It left many wondering if what happened in 2011 has changed the complexion of a very lopsided Bedlam rivalry.

“You’d have to ask them (Oklahoma State),” OU coach Bob Stoops said on Monday. “I’d always had great respect for them before last year. I don’t know.”

The truth is that the Cowboys’ 2011 victory was their first over the Sooners in nine games and just their 17th in 106 meetings (OU leads the series 82-17-7).

Can one game alter perception after a century of one-sided dominance?

What happens when the 14th-ranked Sooners (8-2, 6-1 Big 12) face the 22nd-ranked Cowboys (7-3, 5-2) at 2:30 p.m. Saturday at Owen Field will be telling.

One thing is for sure, it wasn’t close the last time these teams met.

“They flat-out beat us in every aspect,” said OU quarterback Landry Jones, who experienced one of the worst games of his career last year in Stillwater. “Usually we feel like we had some success in some part of the game, but last year they flat-out beat us. It was tough being blown out like that on the road. Hopefully, this year we will turn it around and play a better game.”

If the Sooners don’t, it’s hard to argue that Bedlam has shifted from a lopsided in-state rivalry to an annual battle for Big 12 supremacy.

OSU believes what happened last season was a seismic event, and the landscape has forever changed.

“I think it just kind of proves that OSU isn’t the little brother anymore,” OSU linebacker Cooper Bassett said. “We are a team that is nationally ranked every year, we’re a team that gets great recruits every year, we are the defending Big 12 champion. So it’s not the same little brother-big brother effect anymore. I think that the gap is being closed immensely.”

There were no laughs, snorts or scoffs when the Sooners were presented with the question on Monday.

“They have a lot of momentum coming into the game on Saturday,” King said. “We have to do a good job of matching their best punch with ours.”

Text Only

Sports

Aggies give D-II series a state flavor
A tip of the hat to Murray State College for winning the Plains District tournament this weekend to assure there will be an Oklahoma team in the upcoming NJCAA Division II World Series at David Allen Memorial Ballpark.
The Aggies, who were 5-0 against Northern Oklahoma College Enid this season, beat MCC-Longview 14-7 in the district championship game to take a 41-21 record into the tournament.
They are a team that should be easy for Enid fans to adopt as their own.

May 19, 2013 1 Photo
NJCAA Division II World Series Schedule
May 19, 2013
OU advances in softball
Top-ranked Oklahoma is headed to the NCAA Super Regionals after run-ruling Arkansas 14-1 in a regional softball final at Marita Hynes Field Sunday.
The Sooners (50-4) will host former Big 12 rival Texas A&M, now of the Southeastern Conference next weekend in a best two out-of-three series with the winner advancing to the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City.

May 19, 2013 1 Photo
Majors-Minors twinbill rained out
April showers, bring may flowers.
May showers cancel a lot of baseball games.
Sunday’s scheduled doubleheader between the Enid Majors and Enid Minors was postponed for wet grounds from Saturday’s thunderstorms.
“The field was flooded,’’ Majors coach Chris Jensen said.

May 19, 2013
Sooners No. 4 seed after beating K-State
May 19, 2013
Radio-TV for 5-20-13
May 19, 2013
Hennessey's Aguirre taking tough times in stride
Car Aguirre looks strange confined to a wheelchair.
The story of how the newly-minted Hennessey grad got there is told loosely through a digital jigsaw puzzle — an accident, a near-tragedy, an outpouring of support, a recovery, all expressed in Facebook posts and internet traffic.

May 18, 2013 2 Photos
Enid’s Harmon 4th at endorser
Top-seeded Tyler Harmon, playing with an elbow injury, had a rough day at the 16-Under Oklahoma District Tennis Association Endorser Tournament Saturday at Oakwood Country Club.

May 18, 2013 1 Photo
Ex-Majors make return to Enid for Alumni exhibition
Saturday was a time for Matt Peck and his former Enid American Legion teammates to set back the clock.

May 18, 2013
Jets reflect on tough season
Raydon Leaton’s ambition was to be the host team for the NJCAA Division II College World Series, which opens next weekend at David Allen Memorial Stadium.
Instead, Leaton’s Northern Oklahoma College Enid Jets went through some growing pains during a 17-39 season.

May 18, 2013 1 Photo
More Sports Headlines

Sports

Search Results

Related Photos

Discussion

Last year's loss to Pokes still painful for OU

Site Map

Contact Us