Oklahoma football: Eight is not enough…time to forget, that is

By mid-October 2011, Oklahoma football had played 77 home games under Bob Stoops, who was in his 13th season as the Sooners’ head coach, and lost just three of them.

Texas Tech was in town, sporting a 4-2 record that included consecutive losses in its previous two games. The Sooners, on the other hand, were off to a 5-0 start, including a 55-17 beatdown of rival Texas, and a No. 3 ranking.

Oklahoma had won seven of the previous 10 games with Texas Tech, and if that wasn’t intimidating enough, Stoops’ Sooners were riding a 39-game home winning streak, which at the time was the longest active consecutive-game streak in college football.

The game began, ominously enough, with a 90-minute weather delay. Under those circumstances, you’re never quite sure how if will affect the players. You would think, though, that it would be easier for the home team to adjust to such conditions than the visiting team. At least that was what Sooner fans were hoping as they anxiously awaited the weather system to move out and the game to get started.

Texas Tech drew first blood when the game finally got underway, driving 54 yards in four plays and a little over a minute to take a quick 7-0 lead. The Sooners answered 60 seconds later, capped off by a 15-yard Landry Jones touchdown pass to Kenny Stills. That’s the way the first quarter ended with the two teams deadlocked at seven apiece.

But it wouldn’t remain that way for long. Texas Tech scored three of the next four times it had the ball, one prompted by an Oklahoma fumble, putting up 17 unanswered points in the second quarter to take a commanding 24-7 advantage at halftime.

The Red Raiders continued their assault on the Sooners, marching 72 yards with the opening kickoff of the second half to widen their lead to 31-14.

Oklahoma mounted a comeback behind two touchdown passes by Jones and a 22-yard field goal by Michael Hunnicutt to cut the Texas Tech lead to 10, at 34-24, with just 10 seconds gone in the fourth quarter.

“I told the players that anyone we’ll play the rest of the year will whoop us if we don’t play better than we played today. They (Texas Tech) just flat out beat us.” — former Sooner head coach Bob Stoops

The Red Raiders added a field goal and another long drive for a touchdown to extend the lead to 41-24 with seven and a half minutes to go in the game.

The Sooners’ weren’t through, though. Jones connected with Jaz Reynolds on a 55-yard touchdown pass to make the score 41-31, and then hit James Hanna on a 22-yard touchdown pass with a little over a minute remaining to close within three points, 41-38.

Oklahoma attempted an on-side kick on the ensuing kickoff, but the Red Raiders successfully covered the kick and ran out the clock from there.

“I don’t know that it has to be all that surprising,” Bob Stoops said in his postgame comments. “The teams we play can come in here and beat us. And sometimes maybe too much is said about it like it can’t happen.

“I told the players that anyone who we’ll play the rest of the year will whoop us if we don’t play better than we did today, ” the OU head coach said. “They just flat out beat us.”

OU missed an opportunity to ultimately tie the game and send it to overtime when Hunnicutt missed a 28-yard field-goal attempt with 2:52 to go in the game.

Quarterback Seth Doge was the Texas Tech star in the game, completing 33 of 52 passes for 441 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions. Jones collected 412 passing yards and five touchdowns for the Sooners, and running back Roy Finch gained 93 yards on the ground, including a 55-yard run to set up Oklahoma’s first score.

The Red Raiders outgained OU 572 to 536 and the Sooners contributed two turnovers to add to their woes.

The Sooners would lose two more times in the 2011 regular season — to Baylor and Oklahoma State, both on the road — before defeating Stoops’ alma mater, Iowa, 31-14 in the Insight Bowl to finish at 10-3.