Lincoln Riley: ‘Wanted to play like the hunter, not the hunted’
By Chip Rouse
In the aftermath of his team’s dismantling of Oklahoma State, Oklahoma football coach Lincoln Riley said he was proud of the Sooners’ performance.
“I’m proud of the way we’re improving and exciting for this closing stretch,” Riley said in his opening comments in the postgame press conference on Saturday. “Wish we had 10 more games.
“This team’s fun and a lot of fun to coach, and we’re starting to play some decent football,” he said.
That’s put it mildly. The Sooners are on fire, averaging 49.5 points in their last four games, while allowing their opponents an average of 16.7 points. More than a little decent, I would say.
“This team’s fun and a lot of fun to coach, and we’re starting to play some decent football.” —OU head coach Lincoln Riley
“We wanted to play tonight like we were the hunter, not the hunted,” Riley said.
“You can’t come into big games like this against a great opponent and play conservative. We really wanted to emphasize that with our players that we had to play aggressive.
“We had to go take it if you’re going to beat a good team like this, and we certainly did that.”
Riley also had something to say about all the talk about the Sooners defending the Big 12 crown that they’ve won for five consecutive seasons.
“People get into all this of, ‘Well, you’re defending something,’ whether it’s, you won a championship in a previous year, or you won a rivalry game in a previous year, whatever. We’re not defending anything,” the Sooner head coach said. “This is this year’s team and this year’s version, and whatever is in our sights, our goals, we’re chasing those.”
Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy, who now has a 2-14 record against Oklahoma, had this to say in the OSU locker room afterwards:
"“Wish we could have had the first quarter back. We put ourselves in a hole, and we never could really come back.“They outcoached us, they outplayed us…we lost to a better team today.”"