OU/Stoops Visit House of Horrors
Leave a commentOctober 1, 2012 by ryanoudoak
The last time the Oklahoma Sooners lost a home Conference game, they went on the road and blew out a top-10 team by 41 points. Unfortunately we don’t have to go back very far in history to find when that happened, but fortunately most of the people involved with that turnaround are still on the team. Yes, that includes the oft-maligned Landry Jones. I had to search far and wide to find a positive angle on this game and I will admit that this is a bit of a stretch.
The odd thing about the previous loss is that it was against the Texas Tech Red Raiders last year 38-41 in a game that most of us would rather forget. Odder still is that the turnaround happened the next week against undefeated and 10th ranked Kansas St. in Manhattan. The Sooners came out sleepwalking in the first half of that game and found themselves down 14-17 in the second quarter before rallying to score the final 44 points of the game.
There aren’t too many ways to put a positive spin on the state of the Oklahoma program right now and that probably explains why Bob Stoops has been a bit testier than usual in his press conferences. Bringing up the Texas Tech game from last year is probably the worst way to go about doing that. Stoops would definitely have banned me from speaking to the media if I was a member of the organization. Besides, trying to find comparisons between unrelated events is generally a pretty useless exercise. Like did you ever hear about all the similarities between the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy? Interesting if you want to sit down and try to make something of it, but in the end they are separately tragic events that don’t have much commonality outside of the fact that they involved the murder of two popular presidents.
The truth about Oklahoma’s game this Saturday against Texas Tech in Lubbock is that it is in a place that we haven’t had much success playing, against a team that we have not had much luck against led by a head coach against whom Bob Stoops hasn’t had much success. The Red Raiders are not spectacular, but have been efficient enough this year to win all their games which is something that only 22 other teams this year can claim. They are stingy against the pass and they have a well-balanced offense and their fans may or may not throw used batteries at the opposing teams’ players as they stand on the sideline.
But why has Oklahoma struggled so mightily against the Red Raiders. They had that darn quirky passing offense under Mike Leach, but that is mostly gone now from Lubbock and can be found in Pullman, Stillwater, College Station, and Morgantown. But anyway, Stoops didn’t have any trouble beating Mike Leach when they played in Norman, so that can’t be the whole story. It wasn’t until Leach was unceremoniously removed from Lubbock and replaced by Tommy Tubberville that OU lost to the Red Raiders in Norman under Stoops. But then Tubberville actually had to play OU in Norman two years in a row because of the fluky schedule that was created by the defections of Colorado and Nebraska two years ago, so Tubberville’s teams have won and lost in Norman.
Check back later in the week for a full preview of this game and more relevant information to this year’s contest. For now, here is a breakdown by numbers of the Sooners’ struggles against Tech under Stoops:
Bob Stoops Record:
Overall 141-35
Home 78-4
Away 39-18
Neutral 24-13
Bob Stoops Record vs. Texas Tech
Overall 8-5
Home 6-1
Away 2-4
Games Played in Lubbick
1999 – OU 28 Texas Tech 38 L
2001 – OU 30 Texas Tech 13 W
2003 – OU 56 Texas Tech 25 W
2005 – OU 21 Texas Tech 23 L
2007 – OU 27 Texas Tech 34 L
2009 – OU 13 Texas Tech 41 L
I read post on Twitter today that broke down Bob Stoops Winning Percentage at Oklahoma from:
2000-2004 — .900
2005-present — .760
2009-present — .740
No team represents that drop off better than our individual performance against Texas Tech:
2000-2004 — 5-0 1.000
2005-2011 –4-3 .571
2009-2011 — 1-2 .333
For Comparison, performance against Texas:
2000-2004 — 5-0 1.000
2005-2011 — 3-4 .429
2009-2011 — 2-1 .667
Combined performance against Texas and Texas Tech:
2000-2004 — 10-0 1.000
2005-2011 — 7-7 .500
2009-2011 — 3-3 .500
Combined performance against Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, and Baylor:
2000-2004 –19-1 .995
2005-2011 — 19-9 .678
2009-2011 — 7-5 .583
