Published: December 03, 2006 03:59 pm            

When Sooners needed a big play, Paul Thompson was there

• Thompson thrives with game in his hands

By Clay Horning

Transcript Sports Editor

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A week earlier, at Boone Pickens Stadium, with the game on the line, Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops turned to his defense. Even if it took the ball out of quarterback Paul Thompson’s hands.

Saturday night at Arrowhead Stadium, playing Nebraska in the Big 12 championship game and sporting a running game that would finish with only 42 yards on 28 carries, Stoops had no choice but to turn to Thompson and whoever the fifth-year senior might find to throw the ball to.

It worked.

By way of a 21-7 victory, OU earned yet another conference championship. And while the defense came up big, the offense got it done through the air.

“There’s a lot of different ways to win,” Stoops said.

Thompson completed 19-of-34 passes for 265 yards. Two went for touchdowns, one was picked off. But even then, Thompson had to throw it up for grabs or give up a safety.

And while Thompson was excellent, Malcolm Kelly may have been even better, catching 10 passes for 142 yards and both touchdowns.

The first hook-up between the two was a home run, when Thompson hit Kelly in stride, a step beyond a defender, and Kelly took it the rest of the way for a 66-yard first-quarter touchdown.

That put the Sooners up 14-0, yet even though Thompson had already thrown for 153 yards by the half, it was still just 14-7 with 4:46 to play in the third quarter when Thompson and the Sooners found themselves pinned at their own 1-yard-line, already having gone nowhere their two previous second-half possessions.

Afterward, this is what Stoops said of what was about to happen.

“Paul was sensational throughout that drive,” he said.

Maybe not at first. At first, he overthrew Kelly. Then, Allen Patrick went nowhere. Then the show got on the road.

Sooner tight ends only caught one pass all night, but it was then, when Thompson found Jermaine Gresham for 35 yards out of his own end zone that everything started to change.

“That kind of got us going,” Thompson said.

Thompson would go on to hit Juaquin Iglesias once, Kelly two more times and true freshman Adron Tennell once during the drive as he marched the Sooners down the field.

The last one was a 3-yard fade pattern that Kelly caught over his right shoulder while somehow getting a foot down before going out of bounds.

In the 99-yard drive, Thompson completed 6 of 8 passes for 95 yards.

Seven days earlier, in Stillwater, Thompson had only thrown for 77 yards. He bested that total in the space of one drive and just 3:21 on the clock.

Thanks to the Sooner defense, it was the game’s final touchdown.

It was the icing on the Big 12 championship cake.

Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com

        

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