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Bedlam 2004-2005

Football:

Oklahoma barely escaped another season-spoiling upset by Oklahoma State. Adrian Peterson rushed for 249 yards and Cowboys kicker Jason Ricks missed a 49-yard field goal with 11 seconds left, giving the second-ranked Sooners a 38-35 victory over their pesky instate rivals on Saturday.

Mark Bradley caught a career-high three TD passes for Oklahoma (8-0, 5-0, Big 12), which has won two straight over the Cowboys since losing two costly games in the Bedlam series in 2001 and 2002.

No. 20 Oklahoma State (6-2, 3-2) took possession at its own 19 with 2:44 remaining. Donovan Woods' 17-yard completion to Morency and the quarterback's two 6-yard rushes put the Cowboys' in Ricks' range.

But the freshman, whose 28-yard field goal with 55 seconds left beat Missouri last week, pushed his kick wide left and Oklahoma ran out the clock. Ricks is now 0-for-3 on kicks of more than 40 yards.

Basketball:

It was Oklahoma State that went to last year's Final Four and not Oklahoma. Right? It was the Cowboys who fell two points shy of getting to the national title game and the Sooners who fell two victories shy of even getting an invitation to the NCAA tournament. Correct? Just thought I'd double-check, because some definite role-reversal took place in Monday night's game between the two teams at Lloyd Noble Center.

OU 67, OSU 57. No, it wasn't that close. Great expectations surround this year's Cowboys. But every OSU coach with the last name of Sutton has spent much of this season publicly dog-cussing the team. Monday provided further evidence why this is so.

The Cowboys are ranked No. 9, but they don't play with near the fortitude they did a year ago. Not near the ambition, the drive, the inspiration. It's as though they half expect a return trip to the Final Four to be shipped Fed-Ex.

This just in: OSU misses guard Tony Allen. They miss his Chicago manner, his street smarts. "Tony Allen was a tough, tough kid," Cowboys coach Eddie Sutton said, "and he made our other guys tougher. And some of our players right now aren't very tough." When you've reached the mountaintop, often times you forget what it feels like down low.

OU players know exactly what it feels like, having to settle for an NIT invite rather than an NCAA berth last season. Sooners coach Kelvin Sampson had been to 10 straight NCAA tournaments -- his final season at Washington State and his first nine at OU. On a tee box during the off-season, Sampson admitted not being awarded a spot in the 65- team field hurt. It hurt much more then he had anticipated. This helps explain why his team looks famished, starved for attention. It's why the Sooners have scratched and clawed their way atop the Big 12 at 5-0. A 17-0 early run gave OU a 19-2 lead Monday.

For OSU, the score was as bad as it looked. Only three Sooners scored in the first half -- forward Kevin Bookout, forward Taj Gray and guard Drew Lavender. The Cowboys have some issues underneath, as evidenced by Bookout and Gray combining for 45 points and 14 rebounds. Until guard Jaison Williams buried a 3-pointer with 11:39 left in the game, the Sooners' longest field goal had been a 7-foot bank shot from Bookout. OU's longest field goal before intermission was from 5 feet. "Our defense was sorry," Sutton said.

The Cowboys trailed by only nine points at the half, though it seemed more like 29. As he emerged from the OSU locker room after halftime, perpetually perspiring head coach designate Sean Sutton rolled his eyes, forced a chuckle and said, "That (half) was a thing of beauty, wasn't it?" No, it wasn't. And the second half wasn't much prettier.

Sutton called it the worst his team has played in Norman in his 15 seasons as Cowboys coach. At times, it might have been the best OU has played in Bedlam under Sampson. Have the Cowboys and Sooners crossed paths -- one going up, the other going down?

	79		Feb 7, 2005 Our crowd is everything. They support us every game. Even in preseason. They get us going. And we win games for them. We don't just win games for us. Today was for the players who played before us. For the players who play now. For our fans. The alumni. And for our school. And for the city of Stillwater.		67

JamesOn Curry led the postgame charge to the student section. Stevie Graham followed. Then came John Lucas and Joey Graham, and before long, the entire Oklahoma State squad had been swallowed by an impromptu mosh pit, enveloped by the joy. Gallagher-Iba rocked Monday night. So did the Cowboys.

The Cowboys beat down their Bedlam rivals, taking a big-time shot from a stout band of Sooners but standing taller in the end. All of it rekindles memories of that OSU squad of a year ago and reminds everyone how good this year's version can be. "It was just a matter of time before we started clicking and rolling," superstud Joey Graham said. "I think we're at that point now."

Hard to argue that after Monday. The Cowboys have now won their last four games, and all of them have been by wide margins. The narrowest of those games came against the Sooners, and in the end, it wasn't exactly a squeaker. Monday night had all the markings of a close game, too. The Cowboys shot 59.1 percent in the first half. They hit five of the seven shots they took from behind the 3-point line. They had a good half by any account.

Their halftime lead: a whopping two points. Never a good sign to have played so well and led by so few. The Cowboys didn't panic and didn't fold. Even when the Sooners hit three of their first four shots of the second half and matched the Cowboys stride for stride, OSU just kept fighting. Even when the Cowboys extended the lead and the Sooners sliced it in half, OSU stayed tough.

Those were hallmarks of last year's Final Four squad, and these Cowboys have recaptured that magic of yesteryear. "We had goals at the beginning of the season to win the Big 12, the Big 12 Tournament, the NCAA Tournament, the national championship," sharpshooter JamesOn Curry said. "But those goals weren't going to become possible unless we hunkered down and took care of business."

That realization smacked the Cowboys upside the head after the first go-around with the Sooners. When last these two teams tussled, the Cowboys played like a team confused. They didn't know what to do. They didn't know where to go. They were a ship without a rudder, a road trip without a map. They were lost. Now, these Cowboys know exactly where they're going, and their path is very reminiscent of the one taken a year ago.

They have a dominating presence in Joey Graham. Young Joseph played Monday like the best player in the league. Not in spurts. Not in fits and starts. The entire game. He led the way and set the tempo. John Lucas has re-established himself, too, providing the spark his team sorely missed from him a few weeks ago. Nailing that three-pointer after OU cut the lead to four looked familiar, eh? Lucas hit roughly 823 big shots last season.

Now, the Cowboys have a third star in their constellation. Curry is filling the void left by Tony Allen. Oh, the true freshman with the big grin isn't the defensive stopper that Allen was. Then again, few players are. Curry, though, has Allen-like ability on the offensive end. That has changed the way Graham and Lucas can play because Curry has changed the way defenses must play the Cowboys. "He's making a lot of people come to him," Graham said, "and he can dish it or he can take it to the basket and score. We found the missing link in JamesOn."

Maybe it was just a matter of time before these Cowboys caught fire, but the heat got turned up after that game in Norman. Much like last season when a whacking at Texas Tech stirred OSU to action, being dominated by the Sooners sparked the Cowboys. Their mettle was tested. "It was tough times," Curry said, "but if you're a strong person, you're not going to stay down. You're going to get up. We're a strong team. We got up."

They're not just standing. They're running and jumping for joy these days. They're mosh pitting and celebrating and acting like the orange-clad bunch that played until the first weekend of April last spring. The Cowboys are lost no more. Same goes for their swagger. "We definitely got it back now," Joey Graham said.

The all-tournament ballots were already in when John Lucas started his late run. Otherwise, the most valuable player on the floor might also have been the Big 12 tournament MVP. Lucas scored six of his 19 points in the final 1:33, including a crucial free throw with 4.4 seconds left, and No. 10 Oklahoma State earned its second straight Big 12 tournament championship with a 72-68 victory over Texas Tech.

Wrestling:

	21		December 12, 2004 Oklahoma State got a pin and three major decisions to counter the upset loss of defending 174-pound national champion Chris Pendleton as the Cowboys edged Oklahoma 21-16 before 2,871 fans in Lloyd Noble Center on Sunday afternoon.		16

	18		February 20, 2005 Oklahoma State's wrestling team won six matches en route to an 18-13 Bedlam victory over Oklahoma in front of 8,697 fans at Gallagher-Iba Arena on Sunday afternoon. Steve Mocco clinched a tight dual with a decision over Joel Tapler in the final match of the night.		13

Oklahoma State took home its third consecutive Big 12 title by placing eight wrestlers in the finals and winning seven individual titles. OSU finished the tournament with 95.5 points, ahead of second-place Iowa State who had 47 points. Nebraska, Oklahoma and Nebraska finished third, fourth and fifth, respectively.

Oklahoma State concluded the NCAA Wrestling Championships at the Savvis Center in St. Louis by crowning five champions and finishing with a school record 153 points. The championships is the 33rd NCAA wrestling title for the Cowboys and their first three-peat since Art Griffith led Oklahoma A&M to three straight titles from 1954-56. Michigan finished 2nd with 83 points and OU finished 3rd with 77.5 points.

Steve Mocco is this year's recipient of the Dan Hodge Trophy given to the top collegiate wrestler in the country. John Smith was named Big 12 Wrestling Coach of the Year as it was voted on by the conference coaches and announced today. Five former Oklahoma State wrestlers qualified for the World Team Trials by placing at the U.S. Senior Nationals.

Baseball:

Scouting ahead: Oklahoma State's NCAA hopes took a hit with Sunday's loss. With a win, OSU could have firmed a grasp on fifth place in the Big 12 standings -- a spot that traditionally has been a lock for the postseason. "I would hope our league stands up to the test of time throughout the country," coach Frank Anderson said. "I would hope we get five or six teams in the NCAA Tournament. I want to get in the Big 12 Tournament right now. That's our next goal right here. I don't look too far down the road."

Anderson said he wouldn't stress any urgency with road games at Wichita State on Tuesday, then a conference-closing series at Kansas this weekend. "I think that stuff takes care of itself, if you play well," he said. "We're not just an overly tough group of kids anyway. I think you compound things if you put pressure on them right there with, 'We've got to win this game,' or, 'We've got to win that game.' I think you've just got to go out and play as hard as you can and as clean as you can and deal with what happens."

Argumentative type: OU interim coach Sunny Golloway wore a path from the dugout to the field on Saturday and Sunday. Nine times in two games at SBC Bricktown Ballpark, Golloway argued with umpires. "I hope it didn't look like spilled milk," Golloway said. "I thought they were bang-bang calls. You've got to go out there and show your kids you're willing to fight. I didn't want our kids to feel like, 'I'm safe, where's Coach?' Fighting for the kids. They are not going to change the calls." Asked whether he believed the umpires were wrong, Golloway said, "I'm not going to comment on it."

Interference: One of Golloway's conversations with the umpires Sunday came after a controversial call in the eighth inning. Chuckie Caufield stole second base, but he was sent back to first when home plate umpire Chris Coskey called interference on batter Kody Kaiser. Kaiser had swung and missed; umpire crew chief Randy Bruns said Kaiser's backswing hit OSU catcher Jeff Parrish. Normally, in interference situations, an out is called. But citing rule 6.2-d, the umpires called the ball dead and sent Caufield back to first. "The batter is not out because there is no interference," Bruns said.

Kaiser didn't think there was interference, either. "We clearly had the base stolen," he said. "The catcher bobbled the ball and just because of my natural follow-through, they tried to say that was backswing interference." It didn't matter. Kaiser singled. Caufield raced all the way to third and scored when OSU right fielder Corey Brown airmailed the throw out of play. "It was nice that even having to work against some bad umpiring, some bad officiating in the game, that we were able to come through," Kaiser said.

Brown's adventurous afternoon: Cowboys freshman Corey Brown won't soon forget his first Bedlam experience -- good and bad. The OSU right fielder, hitless in his first six at-bats through two games, tied Sunday's game twice, the final time at 4-4 in the ninth. He also provided a defensive gem on a diving catch in the gap. But Brown was also responsible for the errant throw that allowed OU to tie it in the eighth and was doubled off first after his heroic moment in the ninth when he forgot how many outs there were on Jeff Parrish's fly out. "Kind of like that movie, 'Sideways,' " said Cowboys coach Frank Anderson. "Things went sideways on him a little bit. He had some ups and downs. But he's a great player. We're sure glad to have him."

Said Brown: "I came into today's game just wanting to get a hit, because I was hitless the whole series. I had some good hits. Then of course, in the top of the eighth, I threw the ball in the stands. I was able to get a clutch hit to tie the game up." Then ... the baserunning gaffe. "That was another mistake by me. I was, I guess, in my own world after I tied it up, pumped about it. I didn't really realize how many outs there were."

Bedlam supremacy: After the win, the Sooners were awarded the Bedlam Bell, denoting OU's win in the all-sports competition between the rivals, 9.5 to 8.5. The race came down to baseball; OU won the series, two games to one.

Packing 'em in: Bedlam might not pack the punch it once did, with both teams bumping along in the middle of the Big 12 pack. But the three games drew 33,669 fans to Tulsa and Oklahoma City, an average of 11,223. Friday's game at Drillers Stadium drew 11,109 (capacity is 10,997). Saturday's game at SBC Bricktown Ballpark drew a sell-out 13,066. Sunday's attendance was 9,404.

Long ball: OU's Kevin Smith sent an eighth-inning home run over the wall in right like he knew what pitch was headed his way. Turns out, he did. "I looked down at coach Golloway," Smith said. "He said, 'Scoot up on the plate,' so I scooted up on the plate. When (Scott Richmond) got in his windup, I saw his eyes looking inside. I thought, 'I hope it's a fastball, because I'm going to go early,' and it happened to be a fastball." The home run, Smith's third of the year, tied the game at three.

Back to the Brick: OU's victory Sunday secured a berth in the Big 12 Tournament, which begins May 25. OSU needs one win or one Texas A&M loss to secure a berth. Home-field advantage: OU has won eight of the last nine Bedlam games in Oklahoma City. OSU has won the last five in Tulsa. Slump-snapper: OSU first baseman Adam Carr snapped an 0-for-15 streak when he led off the fifth inning with a double. It was good timing. Carr scored OSU's first run; the Cowboys scored another and tied the game at 2 in the inning.

George Schroeder, John Helsley and Carter Strickland. Bedlam notebook. The Oklahoman. May 16, 2005.

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