By John Shinn
The Norman Transcript
September 10, 2008 12:39 am
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Oklahoma’s players admit they’ve been taking about it for months. Sooner coaches tried identifying the problem and couldn’t put a finger on what needed to change. But it’s the million dollar question surrounding the third-ranked Sooners.
Will OU struggle away from home again this season?
The question can begin to be answered at 6:45 p.m. Saturday when OU (2-0) faces Washington (0-2) at Husky Stadium in Seattle.
“It’s something we’ve talked about a lot this summer,” OU quarterback Sam Bradford said. “This is our first opportunity to come out and kind of redeem ourselves for the way we played on the road last year.”
If the road to the national championship didn’t detour from Owen Field, the Sooners would be kings of college football. Last Saturday’s 52-26 victory over Cincinnati ran their home-winning streak to 20 games.
But winning a championship requires prevailing on somebody else’s turf. That was an area OU struggled with last season. It played outside the confines of Owen Field seven times and went 4-3. Two of the wins — the Big 12 championship and Texas — came at neutral sites. Another was at Tulsa, where OU fans packed the stadium.
Only three times did OU truly go into a hostile environment — at Colorado, Iowa State and Texas Tech — and the Sooners struggled in all three, losing two of them.
Players admit they weren’t all there mentally when playing away from home.
“You could tell we were more relaxed and more focused when we were at home,” wide receiver Juaquin Iglesias said. “We just have to figure out a way to take that with us on the road.”
The road problems have been varied.
At Colorado, OU blew a late lead because it couldn’t move the ball offensively and the defense withered late. At Texas Tech, the defense bent too much to give the offense a chance to come back after quarterback Sam Bradford’s first-quarter concussion. At Iowa State, three turnovers helped keep the Cyclones in the game until late in the fourth quarter.
“All of those games are different, but there are some factors that we need to learn from,” offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson said. “History is nice if you can learn from it, and hopefully we can. But we’re not going to try to make it too big a deal other than if we’re going to be a championship-caliber team, we need to be strong enough to win on the road.
“This will be a great challenge. It’s going to be long travel, time zone change, hostile crowd, and so it’s going to be a great opportunity.”
The struggling Huskies hope to present that challenge. Husky Stadium has a well-earned reputation for being one of the loudest venues in college football. The Sooners have been pumping in noise during practice to simulate the atmosphere.
But OU does those same things every season to get ready for road games.
The bottom line is the Sooners have lacked the toughness to handle the pressures of playing in enemy territory.
“We were undisciplined and unfocused,” center Jon Cooper said. “It was a mental thing … We just didn’t have the toughness and discipline to finish those games.”
Those problems cost OU a shot a national championship last season. A toll will be paid again if the problems aren’t rectified. The Sooners have accepted the issues, but they must still do something about it.
“We’ve talked about some of the issues from last year, about how you’ve got to be ready to play,” OU coach Bob Stoops said. “I can be all excited and ready to go, but I’m not in (their) shoes. It’s up to (the players) to put in the extra focus and extra time and commitment to be ready to play.”
John Shinn
366-3536
jshinn@normantranscript.com
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