They couldn’t pull it off. The Sooners pulled away in the second half and won the Big 12 championship, sending Missouri to the Cotton Bowl instead of the national title game.

Now, Missouri gets a rematch — with a chance to ruin Oklahoma’s national championship hopes, no less.

“I don’t think there’s any question about it: Our guys are dying to win this game,” Missouri coach Gary Pinkel said Friday.

Missouri entered last year’s game ranked No. 1 in the BCS, on the cusp of playing in the national title game after winning the Big 12 North with an emotional 36-28 victory over rival Kansas the week before.

Oklahoma squashed Missouri’s BCS hopes with stifling defense and a bruising running game, outscoring the Tigers, 24-3, in the second half to win its second straight conference title. Ohio State and LSU ended up with the invites to the national championship.

When the teams meet again at 7 tonight at Arrowhead Stadium, it’ll be the Sooners (11-1, 7-1) chasing the BCS dream.

Oklahoma enters the game ranked No. 2 in the BCS — No. 4 in the Associated Press poll — after earning a spot in the conference title game by winning a three-way tiebreaker over Texas and Texas Tech in the Big 12 South. Texas beat the Sooners, 45-35, but lost, 39-33, to Texas Tech, a team Oklahoma beat, 65-21.

That meant no head-to-head advantage, so the winner of the Big 12 South came down to the fifth tiebreaker: BCS rankings. Oklahoma leapfrogged Texas in this week’s standings, finishing .0218 ahead of the Longhorns after being third the week before.

The shake-up gave the Sooners a clear shot to the BCS title game and stirred contentious debate across the country and in particular in Oklahoma and Texas, where fans took the argument to the sky, editorialized on banners being pulled by small planes.

All the talk has left the Sooners feeling a little slighted just for winning.

“It’s probably a little bit of motivation,” Sooners quarterback Sam Bradford said. “I still think that we feel like we have to go out there and prove something to everyone and prove to them that we do deserve to be in this game.”

Once they finally get on the field, the Sooners will be overwhelming favorites.

Oklahoma is the only team to win five Big 12 titles and can become the first to win three straight. The Sooners followed their loss to Texas on Oct. 11 with six consecutive victories, averaging 59.5 points. Oklahoma also has won its last six games against Missouri and is a 17-point favorite tonight.

You’ve got no chance, the Tigers are being told — and they kind of like it.

“You draw from that a little bit. You want to prove people wrong,” Pinkel said. “We’ve talked about that as a football team, and if you’re a competitor, that’s added incentive for sure.”

For inspiration, the 19th-ranked Tigers (9-3, 5-3) can look to the 2003 Big 12 title game in Kansas City.

Oklahoma went in an overwhelming favorite against Kansas State, undefeated and a game away from playing for its second national championship in four years. Instead, the Sooners were routed, 35-7.