Landry Jones passed for 294 yards and four touchdowns and DeMarco Murray scored three times to help No. 22 Oklahoma hold off Kansas State for a 42-30 win Saturday night. The redshirt freshman completed 26 of 37 passes as Oklahoma (5-3, 3-1 Big 12) jumped to a quick 21-0 lead and hung on while Kansas State (5-4, 3-2) twice closed to within five points in the second half.
Texas at OSU: Offense, Offense, Offense. Both teams can go up and down the field. It won’t be a track meet but this will not be a slobbernocker. Although, Colt McCoy had a big stat line last week in the Missouri game…. his job was made easy by the 200 yards of blanket coverage provided by the Tigers awful secondary each play. You can’t do that with those receivers. OSU’s secondary isn’t much better but they won’t give up the dinks and dunks and find themselves down 21-0 before blinking an eye.
The long losing streak to OU from the late 70’s to the mid 90’s was lengthy and painful for the OSU Cowboy faithful, but this 0-11 run against Texas over the past twelve years has to rank up there with the Bedlam series pain. Mack Brown has never lost to OSU, even though the Pokes have had multiple chances to knock off the Horns. On Saturday night, the Cowboys will have another golden opportunity in front of a sold-out Halloween crowd at TBP Stadium and national television audience. This will be the Horns’ first visit to the renovated stadium, and you can bet the natives will be hungry for burnt orange blood. Win this game, and OSU is squarely back in the Big 12 South title race, Zac Robinson might get some Heisman buzz (might), and the Horn “control our own destiny” mantra is shattered. A Cowboy win on Saturday would totally and completely make up for the last decade.
MIKE JONES: The Oklahoma portion of Sam Bradford’s football career is over. The Heisman Trophy and Davey O’Brien Award-winning quarterback announced Sunday afternoon that Dr. James Andrews would perform surgery on his injured right shoulder Wednesday and that he would then enter next spring’s NFL Draft if the surgery is successful. “I dreamed about coming to Oklahoma my whole life,” Bradford said in a statement. “That’s the reason I came back for this season. And I came back to play, not sit on the bench. “That’s the reason I tried to play after the injury. I’m very disappointed that it didn’t work out differently. Under these circumstances, and after talking to several people, this is the right thing for me to do at this point.”
The Kansas Jayhawks came to the aid of their quarterback on Saturday night after a humbling 35-13 loss to the Oklahoma Sooners. KU coach Mark Mangino didn’t excuse Todd Reesing’s three first-half interceptions, but Mangino was happy to offer up the possibility that his coaching was at least partly responsible. Reesing’s teammates, offense and defense alike, tried to offer some perspective on the kid who showed up on campus four years ago unannounced and changed KU football.
Despite the tough loss to Houston, this season is far from over for the Boys in Orange from Stillwater. Win this week against Baylor and that moves the team to 6-1 overall, 3-0 in conference. And then look who’s on tap for Halloween night in Stillwater: the #3 Texas Longhorns. Beat Texas, and then……… But wait, we are getting ahead of ourselves just a bit. Baylor is the task at hand, and after watching OSU struggle at A&M, then watch a bad Kansas State team absolutely destroy the Aggies, it just may be that nothing comes easy for these Pokes, this year. Alas, a win in Waco is very doable and as of right now, O-State is favored by nearly 10 points. So take care of business this week, and then massive opportunity comes knocking in a week.
Sooners play Kansas for the 101st time this weekend in what once was the longest running continuous series/matchup in college football, until the Big 12 smashed that into pieces with the North/South division setup in 1996. So now these teams meet twice every four years, with OU winning last year in Norman 45-31. OU stands at 3-3 (1-1) overall with Kansas at 5-1 (1-1)
Hubert Anyiam filled in for ineligible All-American Dez Bryant with 10 catches, a career-high 119 yards and the go-ahead touchdown as No. 16 Oklahoma State beat Missouri 33-17 Saturday night. Zac Robinson threw for 227 yards and Lucien Antoine added an interception return for a touchdown as the Cowboys (5-1, 2-0 Big 12) snapped a four-game losing streak on their home field against the Tigers (4-2, 0-2). Missouri’s pass-heavy offense fell flat after a prolific first half, and even a 60-yard punt return on a reverse couldn’t spark a comeback as the Tigers were shut out in the second half. Oklahoma State started Big 12 play with back-to-back wins despite being without Bryant and top running back Kendall Hunter, who missed his fourth straight game with a sprained ankle.
Enough about Colt McCoy and the Texas offense. The Longhorns knocked off rival Oklahoma on Saturday because of their defense. Aaron Williams knocked out Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford on a first-quarter sack, then he and Earl Thomas picked off backup Landry Jones in the fourth quarter to send No. 3 Texas to a 16-13 victory Saturday over the No. 20 Sooners. The 104th edition of this series was one of the ugliest, with the teams combining for eight turnovers and only a single touchdown from each of their supposedly high-scoring offenses. But for McCoy and the Longhorns (6-0, 3-0 Big 12), all that matters is the W. It’s their fourth in five years against the Sooners and it keeps alive their hopes of winning the national championship. They’ll have to be a lot crisper than this to win at Missouri and at Oklahoma State the next two weeks. Oklahoma (3-3, 1-1) lost this game last year yet still managed to win the conference and play for the national championship. That won’t happen this year.
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