Oklahoma football: What’s behind K-State’s mastery over Sooners?

The Oklahoma football history includes just 21 losses in 101 games against Kansas State. Four of those losses, however, have come in the last nine seasons, including each of the last two.

It probably goes without saying, if you are a Sooner fan, games with K-State always seem to evoke and uneasy feeling. You’re not even safe as a home team in this series. The visiting team has won seven of the last 10 games between OU and Kansas State.

Whether that will play a factor in this year’s game, which comes up on Saturday at Kansas State’s Bill Snyder Family Stadium, is yet to be determined, but history is on Oklahoma’s side. The Sooners’ are 7-2 in their last nine games in Manhattan, Kansas, with an average game score of 45-29.

Oklahoma has not lost back-to-back-to-back games to the same opponent since Texas did it three years in a row during a dismal Sooner stretch between 1997-99. The Sooners will be trying to avoid that this Saturday in the game at Kansas State.

What is it that Kansas State does that allows the Wildcats to have so much success against the Sooners? Chris Klieman is in his third season as K-State head coach. He has never lost to Oklahoma. I don’t know of many, if any, coaches who can make that claim unless perhaps they only coached one game against the Sooners.

In Klieman’s first game with K-State versus Oklahoma, in 2019, the Sooners rolled into Manhattan, Kansas, with a 7-0 record and ranked  No. 5 in the country. Kansas State was 4-2 and had already lost two games in the Big 12. OU led 17-7 after one quarter, but the Wildcats scored 34 of the next 40 points and took a 41-23 lead going into the fourth quarter.

The Sooners would rally behind quarterback Jalen Hurts, scoring 18 fourth-quarter points to cut the K-State advantage to 48-41 with just under two minutes to go in the game. Kansas State successfully covered an OU onside kick, however, to close out the win despite 491 yards of total offense and five touchdowns by Hurts.

In the game last season at Oklahoma, it was the Sooners who bolted out to a commanding lead, only to see Kansas State come all the way back to tie and eventually win the game.

Oklahoma, behind new starting quarterback Spencer Rattler, led 21-7 at the half and built the advantage to 35-14 late in the third quarter. That’s when the Wildcats went to work, aided by a fumble recovery and a blocked OU punt, scoring the next 24 points while holding the Sooners’ scoreless the rest of the way.

Sooner fans sat stunned and silent in their seats, watching the final seconds tick off the clock with the scoreboard reading K-State 38 and Oklahoma 35.

So what is it with this Wildcat Magic over highly ranked Sooner football teams?

For one thing, the K-State players are not intimidated by Oklahoma’s ranking and national reputation. It’s no question that every team in the Big 12 gets up for playing the Sooners, and Oklahoma expects to get every opponent’s best shot. For whatever reason, however, the Kansas State players and coaching staff always seem to be well prepared and execute the game plan well when the Sooners come up on the schedule.

What made K-State such a tough out when Bill Snyder was there was their deliberate style of play and his uncanny skill and teaching ability to coach up three-star recruits and turn them into four stars. Kansas State’s ball-control offense is the ideal defensive antidote against explosive, high-powered offenses like Oklahoma’s.

By controlling the ball and the clock on offense with a heavy dose of run plays and an occasional pass or two when needed to keep the opposing defense honest keeps the opposing offense on the sidelines and, importantly, shortens the game by limiting possessions and scoring opportunities for the other team.

Kansas State does that as well as anybody in the college game. Limited offensive possessions for the other team theoretically means fewer points on the scoreboard, and the closer the game is, the better chance a team like K-State has to pull out a win.

With Snyder before and now Klieman, the Wildcats play fundamentally sound football. They don’t make mistakes, and they definitely don’t beat themselves, which is a big reason Kansas State has been as successful as it has for so long with the limited talent resources it has.

And then there’s the inexplicable phenomenon that some teams just have more success against certain teams than others. That seems to be the case, at least in recent times, when Oklahoma and Kansas State meet

What all this comes down to is, Oklahoma needs to be extremely careful not to get caught looking beyond the game with Kansas State on Saturday and ahead to next Saturday’s Red River Showdown with Texas.

Saturday’s game at K-State has all the makings of a trap game, but only if the Sooners allow it to be.