OKLAHOMA 44, KANSAS 7

Nick Krug

• Box score

KEEGAN RATINGS

Norman, Oklahoma ? You’ll have to excuse Wisconsin running back Melvin Gordon if he’s not the biggest Samaje Perine fan right now.

One week after Gordon was the talk of college football after breaking former TCU great LaDainian Tomlinson’s 15-year-old, single-game NCAA rushing record with a 408-yard romp in a victory over Nebraska last weekend, the Oklahoma freshman Perine dropped Gordon into second place on the all-time list with a 427-yard effort during Saturday’s 44-7 whipping of Kansas University at The Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.

L.T. got 15 years to enjoy his record. Gordon got 15 minutes. And there’s no telling how long Perine’s record will stand. After the loss, however, interim KU coach Clint Bowen’s comments provided a little insight, as Bowen compared Perine — pronounced Pee-Ryne — to some of the best backs to ever come through the Big 12.

“He’s 245 pounds, he runs fast, changes direction, obviously has great strength and power, has great vision,” Bowen said. “I don’t think there’s anything that’s bad about the kid. He’s a special running back, one of the better ones we’ve had in the conference going back to Ricky Williams and Adrian Peterson and those guys.”

Perine broke Gordon’s record with a 42-yard rumble to the right side in which he broke a tackle in the middle of the field, bounced it to the outside, stepped out of another near-tackle down the field and raced 30 more yards that put some distance between himself and the Jayhawks and Gordon.

That run was one of the few big gains Perine delivered that did not end with him handing the ball to the referee in the end zone. The OU back who now has 1,428 yards on the season, scored on runs of 49, 33, 34, 66 and 27 yards during his domination of the Jayhawks (3-8 overall, 1-7 Big 12). That’s not to say the record-breaking gain was not accompanied by a little flair.

After Perine secured the record on his 34th carry, Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops called timeout and allowed the OU fans and Perine’s teammates to serenade the 5-foot-11, 243-pound freshman with roars of approval while the public address announcer shared the news of the record over the loud speaker. From there, Perine headed to the bench for the final 12:02 of the game.

Two KU players who spoke with the media after the game said they were unaware of Perine’s pursuit of the record until the break in the action.

“When they announced it and you stood there and they gave him a standing ovation, it hurt,” junior safety Fish Smithson said. “No one wants to be that team that gets records broke on them, so obviously that hurt a lot.”

OU’s 517 rushing yards marked the biggest embarrassment by the KU run defense since Georgia Tech torched it for 604 yards in a 2011 loss. And Perine’s big day marked the second time this season that a true freshman lit up the Jayhawks. Back in Week 2, Duke’s Shaun Wilson set a school record with 245 yards in a 41-3 Blue Devils victory.

After the game, Bowen was less worried about Perine’s record and more worried about the loss that more resembled KU’s 60-7 setback at Baylor than what KU had put on the field during the past two weeks.

“We didn’t stop him in any way, shape or form,” Bowen said. “I don’t know if the record makes a difference. We wanted to win the football game. I would’ve given up the record if we could’ve won.”

That never looked likely. While OU’s offensive line had its way with the KU defense, the Sooners’ defensive line was equally as disruptive to KU’s offense. Kansas finished with just 103 yards of total offense on 59 plays, including a rushing attack that delivered 36 yards on 19 carries, for a paltry 0.5 yards per rush average.

“They dominated the game,” Bowen said. “With the conditions, it made it more of a line-of-scrimmage game and they won.”

Added KU quarterback Michael Cummings, who was under duress most of the afternoon: “It was a grind-it-out type of game with the weather and they just made more plays than we did. When you have timing thrown off a little bit it messes up the pass game…. It was definitely frustrating. It shifted our mentality as an offense to (being) more dependent on the ground game.”

Of course, none of KU’s struggles on offense mattered in the big picture. Even one of KU’s best offensive days would not have done anything to help stop Perine.

At one point during the freshman’s record-breaking first half — he passed Peterson for most yards by an OU back in a single half with 222 yards — Perine carried the ball on nine consecutive plays for a total of 114 yards. Inexplicably, OU ended the streak by allowing red-shirt freshman QB Cody Thomas (3-of-13, 39 yards, 21 rushing yards) to throw a pass to no one in particular on the 10th play of that sequence. But Stoops came right back to Perine on play No. 11 and the rookie rumbled through another huge hole 34 yards to the end zone to put the Sooners (8-3, 5-3) up 24-0 just before halftime.

KU’s only score of the afternoon came on a 67-yard fumble return by senior safety Cassius Sendish. Junior safety Isaiah Johnson knocked the ball away from OU running back Keith Ford — on another one of those odd plays when Stoops elected to give the ball to someone other than Perine –and Sendish scooped it up to cut the score to 31-7 with 13:34 to play in the third. Sendish said the Jayhawks hoped that would spark some kind of comeback.

“Of course,” he said. “But obviously you could see it didn’t.”

Instead, the rest of the day became about Perine’s pursuit of the week-old record and the Jayhawks were powerless to stop it.

“It’s definitely hard to swallow,” Sendish said. “It hurts. It definitely hurts. But we gotta get over it.”

That was Bowen’s message in the locker room. Rather than dwelling on landing on the wrong side of history or worrying too much about what went wrong on a day when almost everything did, he emphasized moving forward.

“I told ’em we’re not gonna let this one beat us twice,” Bowen said. “It’s time to move on.”

Added Smithson: “It’s not easy to do. I just feel if the coach says get it out of your mind and let’s move forward, that’s the best thing to do.”