By John Shinn

Transcript Sports Writer

SAN DIEGO — Oklahoma went to the Holiday Bowl looking for redemption. The 2005 regular season was filled with disappointments for a program and a fan base accustomed to winning Big 12 Conference championships and spending the holidays at BCS bowls.

The Sooners’ 17-14 victory over No. 6 Oregon in Thursday night’s Holiday Bowl might not be enough to bail out a down year by OU’s lofty standards, but it did give a clear indication they came a long way from their 2-3 start to the season.

“ I just like the fact that we improved as we went,” OU coach Bob Stoops said Friday morning before returning to Norman. “A lot of players didn’t have a whole lot of experience or none when we started. They’ve shown marked improvement throughout the year.”

The Holiday Bowl victory allowed OU to finish the 2005 season by winning six of their last seven games. Only a disputed call in a 23-21 loss at Texas Tech prevented a seven-game winning streak.

For a team that started the year playing a plethora of inexperienced players, there was a feeling of accomplishment.

“We could have gone downhill after we started 2-3. Everybody was down,” quarterback Rhett Bomar said after throwing for 229 yards Thursday and being named the Holiday Bowl’s offensive MVP. “We kept our confidence in each other and came back.”

Stoops recalled the feeling after a 45-13 loss to Texas on Oct. 8, dropped them to 2-3. From players to coaches, everything was being called into question.

“I told the players I felt a little sense of them pressing or wanting to jump in with everybody else that the sky is falling,” Stoops said. “I said, ‘Wait a second, you guys are not far off. Relax and have a little fun with it.’ I felt because it was so unusual for us to be in that situation, they felt too much pressure about it.

“I said, ‘You need to relax and have confidence in what you’re doing and keep improving and have a little fun. You can’t sit here and press. It doesn’t do you any good. You have to enjoy what you’re doing.’ I said the same thing to the staff.”

In the end, it worked,

OU had 22 players made their first career starts this season and that group included 12 freshmen. It clearly wasn’t a team made up of veteran stars like other Sooner teams.

It took this group a while to come together. They viewed the Holiday Bowl as a chance to show that off.

“When they started putting together bowl lineups, we were targeting the Holiday Bowl,” Stoops said. “We felt in playing such a good football team in Oregon, what an opportunity.