It’s been 10 days since Oklahoma last played a game and four days until the Sooners host Kansas State at Owen Field.

So, what has OU done with the time in between?

“We needed to get guys more snaps, play a little smarter and, as you can tell, we can play harder than we are,” OU coach Bob Stoops said Monday. “All of that is what we’ve worked on.”

In essence, the Sooners returned to training camp during their bye week. Preventing the turnovers, missed tackles and penalties that have plagued them were the issues on the table. Future opponents took a back seat to improving as team. That’s a big switch from what OU has done with its previous bye weeks.

“The past couple of years, we’ve always had to work on the next game coming up or worked on the Cotton Bowl (OU-Texas),” fullback J.D. Runnels said. “It’s always been about somebody else. This bye week I truly think it was just about us. There was nobody else but OU.”

And OU spent a lot of time on itself.

Past bye weeks have included some extra days off for the players and coaches spending more time preparing game plans for opponents. That didn’t occur this time around. The Sooners’ have only had two days away from the practice field since their 41-24 loss to UCLA.

“Guys have worked hard and I appreciate it,” Stoops said. “Now, we just have to eliminate the mistakes and improve everything we’re doing. I feel like we’ve made some strides.

“We’ve had more work. We practiced the whole six days. Usually, we only practice three or four. They were long, hard practices. It was 95, 96 degrees everyday. It wasn’t anything to do with punishment. It was a time where we had to play better and we went against each other and did a lot of work.”

The only thing left to see is if the extra work pays off when OU opens Big 12 Conference play against the Wildcats.

“A few small things here and there and we’re off,” defensive tackle Dusty Dvoracek said. “We can always get it corrected out here, but if we get it corrected on the field Saturday, we’re going to be a really good football team.”

John Shinn366-3536jshinn@normantranscript.com