Sooners Stick to Winning Gameplan

NORMAN, Okla. -- Jason White can't remember ever telling his coach he wanted the ball quite like he did in No. 2 Oklahoma's last game.

He'd just thrown an interception that directly resulted in his team losing the lead. It was a costly mistake that could have snowballed into disaster, but White picked up the sideline phone and told offensive coordinator Chuck Long that he'd lead his team to a score if Long put the ball back in his hands.

After hanging up, White would complete his next five passes and put the Sooners ahead to stay with a 15-yard touchdown pass to Mark Clayton.

"Any time you make a mistake, you want to make up for it," White said Tuesday. "Our offense did a great job of that, and we took a lot of time off the clock doing it. That helped our defense out."

It was certainly a different story than the last time a White pass ended up in a Kansas State defender's arms. When Ted Sims picked off a pass from White in the Big 12 title game, it put the Wildcats ahead 35-7 in the fourth quarter and well on their way to an upset.

After his interception Saturday, a resilient White threw two more touchdowns and finished with a season-high four TD tosses.

"It was good for not only me, but for the whole team to overcome adversity. That's as bad as you can get -- to let the defense score ...," White said. "We had a good attitude about it coming out on the field. We knew that we had to do something about it.

"That shows that we've grown up a lot from last year."

Coach Bob Stoops was impressed with the Sooners' response on the road.

"I think it shows a lot of character, especially (since) everybody had deja vu on that interception," Stoops said. "It would have been easy for everyone to say, 'Oh, here we go again.'

"Instead, we get the ball back and take it right back down the field."

Even with White's big day, Stoops was perhaps more pleased that his team didn't abandon the run just because it was behind on the scoreboard.

"In the second half, being behind after the interception, it would have been easy to all of a sudden start trying to throw it, but we stuck to what we were doing and kept running the ball well," Stoops said.

Adrian Peterson had 64 of his 130 yards in the fourth quarter and helped set up the Sooners' final touchdown.

"We opened up when we had to on some of those third downs, but we also stuck to the running game and made them continue to deal with it," Stoops said.

White said it was also a matter of the Sooners trusting the strategy they brought into the game.

"They can't always be in the right place at the right time for every play," White said. "If they're going to stop the run, we're going to throw it. But we had a gameplan and we're going to use that game plan and execute that game plan the way it's supposed to be executed."

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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