Published: October 12, 2008 11:48 pm            

OU doesn't dwell on loss

DALLAS — Sobering thought for Oklahoma after the previously No. 1-ranked Sooners lost to archrival Texas 45-35 Saturday.

The Sooners have never won a national championship in a season in which they have lost to the Longhorns.

That was the least of OU’s worries during an afternoon in which the Sooners lost middle linebacker Ryan Reynolds, gave up a 96-yard kickoff return for a touchdown and rushed for only 48 yards.

The Sooners host once-beaten Kansas Saturday.

“We can’t worry about the national championship or Big 12 championship,’’ said OU defensive tackle Gerald McCoy. “We have to get ready for Kansas.’’

The Sooners have not lost back-to-back regular season games in coach Bob Stoops’ 10 seasons.

“We can’t get down on ourselves,’’ McCoy said. “We have a long season ahead of us. A great team like Kansas is coming to our house. We have to defend it.’’

The Sooners did win the Big 12 championship the last time they lost to Texas. The Longhorns put OU in that position by being upset by Kansas State and Texas A&M.

OU must hope now it can win out (Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State) and hopes Texas loses twice — something which could happen with the rest of the slate that includes Missouri, OSU, Texas Tech, Baylor, Kansas and Texas A&M, which has back-to-back wins over UT.

“We will bounce back,’’ said OU center Jon Cooper. “This will determine what kind of character we have. You never know what the other teams are going to do. We don’t control our destiny right now. We hope the other teams can help us out.’’

“We just have to get our heads up,’’ McCoy said. “Penalties and breakdowns hurt us. We just have to go out and fix it.’’

One thing OU will have to fix is the ground game.

For the second time this season, the Sooners were held to under 50 yards rushing in a game OU averaged only 1.8 yards a carry against UT.

Texas was able to beat the Sooners at the line of scrimmage on running plays.

“I don’t know if we did anything wrong as much as just they got some sets where they got loaded up,’’ said OU offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson.

“I don’t think we ran real hard at times. We just keep challenging our guys. We do need to have the balance, but again they were going to commit in certain sets to overload it. That is why we passed so much. We don’t want to be one dimensional.’’

Sam Bradford threw for more than 300 yards for the fourth time this season (387 yards). He was 28 of 39 two interceptions.

“It’s a disadvantage when you’re not able to run the football,’’ Stoops said.

Wilson said the Longhorns “did some stuff’’ which got OU into some one-back sets. He said the Sooners tried to take advantage of UT’s man-to-man pass coverage, but should have run the ball more.

“We just didn’t make enough plays,’’ Cooper said. “We played OK, but not good enough. We had too many three and outs, which put our defense in a bad situation a couple of times.’’

OU, which had been known for fourth quarter rallies against the Longhorns, were only one of five in third down conversions in the final 15 minutes after being six of 10 the first three periods.

“We had a couple of missed assignments, but like everybody said we just needed to keep fighting on third down conversions,’’ said Texas defensive tackle Roy Miller.

“We were definitely getting doubled team. We just kept playing hard. We were just able to keep fighting and (Brian) Orakpo just kept on making a bunch of plays and we just kept on feeding from plays like that.’’

Texas was 2 of 3 on third down conversions. The one failure was in the final minutes. The Longhorns had to go to a third down only twice in scoring back-to-back touchdowns to overcome a 35-30 deficit.

UT quarterback Colt McCoy was six of seven passing for 62 yards in the fourth quarter. Chri Ogbonnaya had 80 of his 127 yards in the final quarter.