Pick your poison, Pete.
Southern Cal head coach Pete Carroll will face tonight the same skull-and-crossbones dilemma Big 12 Conference coaches faced all autumn.
Whom do you want to stop … tailback Adrian Peterson or quarterback Jason White?
Then again, perhaps Carroll, who also serves as USC’s defensive coordinator, thinks he has enough talent to neutralize Oklahoma’s vaunted 1-2 punch in the national football championship game.
Kansas University had plenty of defensive talent when the Jayhawks met the Sooners on Oct. 23 in Norman, Okla., but KU coach Mark Mangino didn’t have quite enough.
KU’s game plan was to load up against the run, shut Peterson down and let a rejuvenated secondary go one-on-one against OU’s less ballyhooed receivers. As it turned out, OU’s receivers were just as good as Peterson and White. They just didn’t have the pub because, well, there’s only so much ink to go around.
Peterson did nothing early against the Jayhawks. In his first five carries, the touted freshman gained a grand total of five yards. In his next five carries, Peterson gained 16 yards.
Meanwhile, White was shredding the KU secondary. In the first half, White completed 21 of 32 passes for 265 yards and two touchdowns. Still, OU hadn’t made a statement. The Sooners’ lead at the break was a tenuous 14-10.
As you may recall, however, Oklahoma iced it in the third quarter when White threw a 69-yard TD bomb to Brandon Jones and linebacker Lance Mitchell returned a Jason Swanson fumble 28 yards for a score that boosted OU’s lead to 28-10.
The fourth quarter should have been moot. Coach Bob Stoops could have rested White and Peterson, but he didn’t. Stoops had to dance the BCS polka. Stoops had to win impressively over an unranked team or the Sooners might slide in the complicated BCS ratings system.
So in the last 15 minutes Peterson carried the ball 11 times — as many in the first three quarters combined — for 99 yards and one touchdown. And White threw his fourth TD pass, an eight-yard strike to Mark Bradley with just 35 seconds remaining.
Final score: Oklahoma 41, Kansas 10. It was by far the Jayhawks’ most lopsided defeat of the season. KU’s second-worst loss was 30-21 to Colorado.
Oklahoma had run up the score — normally a cardinal sin in the coaching profession — but Mangino vowed he didn’t care, and it wasn’t because he once worked for Stoops.
“I’d do the same thing,” Mangino said in his post-game media session. “In the quest to have one national champion, there’s going to be some casualties along the way. We’re not complaining. We’ve got to keep them out of the end zone. That’s our job.”
White wound up with 27 completions in 44 attempts for 389 yards and four TDs. Oh, and he didn’t throw an interception against the team that would wind up as the Big 12 leader in that category with 19. Overall, it was the 2003 Heisman Trophy winner’s best passing performance of the season.
Later, the sixth-year senior threw for 383 yards and three TDs against Nebraska, another Big 12 north team with a strong defense and a turgid offense, but KU and NU were his only 300-yards plus outings.
Peterson, by the way, finished that sunny late October afternoon with 22 carries for 122 yards. A final accounting showed he and White were involved in 66 plays that accounted for 511 yards and five TDs. The only other OU backfield performer who touched the ball was back-up tailback Kejuan Jones who carried seven times for 20 yards.
On paper, it was a day that did not produce many gold stars for KU’s defenders. Still, future first-team All-Big 12 picks Nick Reid and Charles Gordon led the Jayhawks with 11 and 9 tackles, respectively. And end David McMillan, a first-team all-league pick of the coaches, was credited with two sacks — a notable achievement considering OU’s gargantuan offensive line surrendered a mere seven sacks in the Sooners’ dozen games.
On offense, Kansas couldn’t come close to matching Peterson and White, although that might not have been a factor. The most prolific 1-2 punch the Sooners faced all season was Texas’ Vince Young and Cedric Benson, and OU blanked the Longhorns, 12-0.
Then again, USC boasts an even better two-man package in quarterback Matt Leinart and tailback Reggie Bush, so Stoops will face a pick-your-poison problem, too.
When push comes to shove, though, the winner will be the team that does the best job of shaking off the long layoff of the Orange Bowl’s interminable halftime show.
Thad Allender/Journal-World PhotoAustin, Texas ? All my ex’s, country singer George Strait warbled, live in Texas. So do Bill Self’s X’s.
Strait was singing the blues about former wives, while Self crooned similar soulful strains about all the missed shots his Kansas University men’s basketball team bounced Monday night around the Erwin Center.
Monday’s 82-67 loss to Texas will go on record as the Jayhawks’ third straight road defeat by a double-digit score. Yet this one wasn’t like the 20-point pounding at Oklahoma State or the 19-point stinging at Nebraska.
In this one the Jayhawks absolutely, positively played as hard as they possibly could for as long as they could, and the ball just wouldn’t go in the hole.
Look at Wayne Simien’s numbers. I’ve never seen Simien perform at a higher intensity level, but he was throwing X after X at the hoop. Eleven X’s in 16 attempts. Frustrating. But he wasn’t the only one.
Keith Langford was off (7-of-15 shooting). So was J.R. Giddens (5-of-13). And David Padgett maddeningly missed so many inside shots. Curiously, point guard Aaron Miles, the worst shooter among the starters at 38.3 percent, was the only Jayhawk who had a decent shooting night.
I don’t need to mention the bench, do I? Yep, it was nearly a void again. If it weren’t for Jeff Graves’ two free throws, the Jayhawks would have had as many points off the bench as a team with only five players.
Speaking of Graves, ESPN’s rocket-tongued Dick Vitale mentioned that a technical foul called on Graves with 12:48 remaining turned this one around.
It’s true Kansas lagged by only six points at that stage, then missed its next eight shots, and the Jayhawks were never in it after that. But KU had a stretch in the first half when it also missed eight shots in a row. And no technical foul triggered that drought.
Did Graves’ gaffe cost the Jayhawks the game? Self didn’t think so, and neither do I, although Graves two-handed soft shot-put of the ball at Brian Boddicker while the UT senior lay under the basket was unsportsmanlike at best and stupid at worst.
Self called it a “very, very bad play,” so let’s just leave it at that.
More than anything, those Kansas dry spells were the direct result of the Longhorns’ well publicized depth and the Jayhawks’ glaring lack thereof. Four KU players logged more than 34 minutes on the floor. Only one Longhorn played as many as 33 minutes.
“They got tired, I know,” Texas guard Royal Ivey said. “In the second half, they didn’t have any answers for us.”
Still, if someone hadn’t seen this one in person or on television and had to rely strictly on the stat sheet to make an analysis of the Longhorns’ 15-point victory, the difference would be, believe it or not, free throws.
Each team shot 65 times. Texas made 28 shots and Kansas 25. The Jayhawks and Longhorns had six three-point goals apiece, and the rebounding was basically a wash with UT owning a 39-38 edge. You wouldn’t think Texas would have won by 15 based on those facts.
But the Longhorns converted 20 of 24 free-throw attempts, while Kansas made only 11 of 17. Toss in the three more field goals Texas made, and there you have it.
So while everybody was talking about the Longhorns’ depth wearing the Jayhawks down, UT’s atypical charity shooting was an unspoken factor, because the Longhorns ranked ninth in the Big 12 in free-throw shooting going in at 67.8 percent.
Few teams win on the road, though, shooting 38.5 percent from the floor as Kansas did. When you consider the Jayhawks’ starters took all but five of the 65 shots, fatigue had to have been a factor.
Monday’s loss virtually eliminated any chance Kansas had of winning a third straight Big 12 championship. The Jayhawks’ chances of finishing second are slim, too.
Still, with two home games (Oklahoma and Nebraska) and a road trip to Missouri remaining, Kansas still can finish third in the conference — and that would be really something for a team with a bench that’s virtually in a vacuum.
Lopsided loss for the ages
6Sports video: Texas takes care of KU
Hear Bill: KU-Texas postgame comments
See the photos: KU-Texas photo gallery