Oklahoma was almost out of running backs and almost out of luck Saturday night. The running game that pounded Iowa State, Colorado, Missouri and Texas A&M into submission ground to a near standstill with Adrian Peterson and Allen Patrick out with injuries.

The Sooners, however, kept chugging along with a 34-24 victory over Texas Tech at Owen Field.

Quarterback Paul Thompson made his final game at Owen Field a memorable one, throwing for a career-high 309 yards and two touchdowns.

“I felt pretty calm the entire game, even in the second half,” Thompson said. “I don’t know what it was. Sometimes I just get like that.”

The mode he was in was near perfection. He went 24-for-31 and conducted the offense like a symphony.

After falling behind 24-10 late in the second quarter, the Sooners rolled off 24 unanswered points to improve to 8-2 overall and 5-1 in the Big 12.

The fact the 17th-ranked Sooners won wasn’t surprising.

How they did it was.

The performance came one week after Thompson was just 3-for-12 for 39 yards at Texas A&M.

“Last week was an anomaly,” OU coach Bob Stoops. “Paul can throw the ball, we can catch the ball and we can protect the quarterback. We wanted to make sure this week we had the balance we’ve had in the past.

“And we showed it.”

Malcolm Kelly was the biggest beneficiary. He pulled in 11 passes for 153 yards. He voiced some displeasure after the Texas A&M game. But he seemed pretty content Saturday.

“After I caught that first one, I felt like, ‘Let’s go get this,’” Kelly said.

It took the Sooners a while to get to that point though. They turned the ball over four times and the Red Raiders (6-5, 3-4 Big 12) turned them into 21 points.

Jacob Gutierrez, who made his first start of the season at running back, fumbled midway through the first quarter to set up Graham Harrell’s 30-yard strike to Robert Johnson.