Oklahoma football: In OU win, 7 of 8 possessions produce points
By Chip Rouse
In the first half of the Oklahoma football game at Kansas State on Saturday, the Sooners had three offensive possessions and 141 total yards while yielding 228. Yet the Sooners went to halftime with a 13-10 advantage.
Kansas State led in the game, 7-3, for a total of four minutes, 52 seconds. That’s how long it took the Sooners to respond with an opening touchdown of their own go up 10-7. Although Kansas State would tie the game at 10 apiece, a 27-yard field goal by OU’s Gabe Brkic with two seconds left in the first half gave Oklahoma the lead, which the Sooners would not relinquish the rest of the way.
Oklahoma scored touchdowns on its first two second-half possessions to stretch the lead to 27-10, with 252 of its 393 yards of total offense coming in the final two quarters. The Sooners total offensive output likely would have been much higher had they had more than eight possessions in the game.
While the offense seemed to find a spark against Kansas State, the Sooner defense didn’t necessarily respond in kind. Oklahoma struggled to slow down the K-State offense, led by sixth-year senior quarterback Skylar Thompson, who engineered the two back-to-back Wildcat victories against the Sooners.
The defense held K-State’s rushing leader Deuce Vaughn to just 51 net yards on the ground, but gave up 320 yards through the air and 420 total yards of offense, the most the Sooners have yielded this season.
Next up for the Sooners is the annual rivalry battle with No. 21 Texas in the Cotton Bowl. It will be the 117th game in this classic rivalry series.
Here are a dozen notable numbers that tell the story of Oklahoma’s win at Kansas State:
9 — With the win at Kansas State, Lincoln Riley now has a winning record against every team in the Big 12. Prior to Saturday, the OU head coach was 2-2 against K-State.
9 — For the fifth consecutive game this season, nine different Oklahoma receivers caught passes.
12 — The Sooners have registered at least one turnover in 12 consecutive games and are plus-14 over that span.
16 — Total offensive yards by Oklahoma in the first quarter on Saturday.
27 — Number of first half points Oklahoma has scored in its last three games. The last time that happened over a three-game stretch was in 2006. The Sooners scored 13 points in the opening half against Kansas State.
34 — The number of consecutive games in which the Sooners have scored at least 30 points in a true road game.
40 — OU’s 40-yard pass play to Marvin Mims was the longest OU offensive play in the past three games.
50 — Wins by Lincoln Riley in his first 58 games as the Oklahoma head coach. Only Barry Switzer (56) and Bud Wilkinson (57) reached 50 wins faster than Riley.
53 — Percentage of third-down plays Kansas State converted against the Sooner defense (8 of 15). Oklahoma had not allowed an opponent to achieve a third-down conversion rate of better than 50 percent in the previous 13 games.
70 — Nik Bonitto’s 70-yard fumble return on Kansas State’s opening drive of the game on Saturday was the longest in Oklahoma football history.
88 –– Spencer Rattler’s pass completion percentage against Kansas State (22 of 25). Only two other Sooner quarterbacks have achieved a completion percentage of 80 percent or greater in a true road game: Sam Bradford at Washington in 2008 (85.7 percent) and Baker Mayfield in 2015 at Kansas (84.4 percent).
308 — Oklahoma gained 308 of its 393 total offensive yards in the second and third quarters and outscored Kansas State 24-10 in those two quarters.