After two straight losses, including an embarrassing defeat at Virginia, Texas nose guard Chris Akins knew something had to change. His team was soft. There was little tackling, and the blocking was poor. Penalties and turnovers had plagued the offense during the losing streak.
Akins' coaches apparently agreed.
After being abused by running backs that refused to fall down with a light shove, the Horns increased the intensity during practice last week, and then carried that tenacity on the field. The result was the most lopsided win in Texas head coach John Mackovic's tenure and the largest margin of victory for the Horns since a 72-15 pasting of Rice in 1977.
"I told my position coach [Nelson Barnes] on Wednesday, 'this is what we needed,'" Akins said. "We needed to get back to a more physical-type practice. It paid dividends for us tonight. The offense totally dominated, the defense totally dominated, and I attribute it to the hard practices last week."
Although the Horns gave up 153 yards to Cowboys running back David Thompson, the defense showed an improvement since the previous week against Virginia. Texas gave up 376 yards to Virginia, but cut the total to 262 versus Oklahoma State. It was an overpowering performance by the Longhorns from the first drive to the end of the fourth quarter, when most of Texas' first and second-stringers were relaxing on the sideline.
"College football is a game of motivation really," said Texas quarterback James Brown. "If you can get riled up enough that you believe that you can beat anybody, you really can. If you know you're game plan well enough, and the offense and defense perform well enough, you can beat anybody on any given day."
Brown may be a perfect example of that. His performance against Virginia was the worst of his career, a miserable night in which he completed only 4 of 9 passes with three interceptions and one fumble. On Saturday, he looked like the Brown of old, who won Southwest Conference Player of the Year honors in 1995. Brown completed 12 of 16 passes for 232 yards and one interception, and he ran for a touchdown from the one-yard line.
After his disappointing outing at Virginia, combined with the success of his backup Richard Walton, questions were raised during the week about who should be the starting quarterback. Despite a sore shoulder, however, Brown joined the team for the year's toughest week of practice, anxious to show his poor performance was nothing more than a fluke.
"I wasn't mad," Brown said. "I felt like a loser because we lost to Virginia. But I wasn't mad."
Brown may not have been mad, but the Horns certainly played like an angry team bent on ridding the frustrations that have built in the past two weeks. The consecutive losses saw the Horns drop 17 spots in the Associated Press' Top 25, plummeting from No. 6 to No. 23. And it forced reality on a team that had spent the first part of the season talking about a national championship.
"This win was important because we got our morale back," Adams said. "A win like that brings the team back together. It's the start of something big. With our two losses we got down, but tonight we came back with a win that was good for us."
Texas cornerback Bryant Westbrook said, "This is the reason why I came here, having 11 guys on the field that all want to win."
The Horns pointed to the Oklahoma St. game as the beginning of a new season. With only conference games remaining, Texas has shifted its sights from a national championship run to the Big 12 title. And with convincing wins over Missouri and Oklahoma St. and the rest of the Big 12 South struggling, an appearance in the championship game still seems like a definite possibility.
"We had high sights to try and win the national championship earlier in the year, and we fell behind," Brown said. "I'm not saying it's completely out of reach, but we just have to try to win conference right now and make it to St. Louis."
For two weeks, Texas players have walked under a cloud of defeat. Once a team aiming for a national championship, the Longhorns became a team with a losing steak.
On Saturday, the Horns emphatically changed that.
Texas blasted Oklahoma State 71-14, its largest margin of victory in 19 years. The victory kept the Horns undefeated in the Big 12 conference with Oklahoma next.
The crowd of 67,414 at Royal-Memorial Stadium witnessed 624 total yards by the Texas offense, a second-half shutout by the defense and 689 backflips by the cheerleaders, who match the Longhorn point total after every score.
"I guess we can walk around campus with our heads up now," said Texas fullback Ricky Williams, who rushed for 156 yards on 13 carries.
The 57-point margin was the most since Texas defeated Rice 72-15 in 1977, while the total yards is second only to the 676 yards Texas posted against Southern Methodist in 1969.
The lofty numbers were enough to drop the Horns from No. 23 to No. 25 in both the AP poll and USA Today/CNN poll. Texas was leapfrogged by California, Georgia Tech and Wyoming.
Except for an interception by quarterback James Brown in Texas' first drive of the game, the Texas offense rarely made the kind of mistakes that cost the Horns victories against Notre Dame and Virginia.
Brown came out of his interception funk by throwing several screen passes, and the Texas running backs ran at will, led by Williams and halfback Shon Mitchell, who carried 12 times for 117 yards. The Texas offensive line, which failed to pass-block or run-block against the Cavaliers, dominated the line of scrimmage.
"I think the real difference tonight was our offensive line," said Texas head coach John Mackovic. "They came out and really controlled the game ... I felt that if we came out tonight and controlled the offensive line, the run game would open up quickly for us."
Said Williams: "Our offensive line made us look invincible."
Mackovic, who abhors running up the score, apologized for the excessive point total. But he could hardly have been disappointed.
"I hate to see a score like that," Mackovic said. "I'd rather play well and not worry about the score. But if we play well, we will move the ball and score points."
Brown, who threw four interceptions in 11 passes before completing 12 of 16 passes against the Cowboys, made no apologies.
"I wish we had scored more, but that's not coach Mackovic's style to run up points," Brown said. "We were talking ... in the locker room, and we think we could have scored 120."
Said OSU safety Trent Fisher: "Them coming off two losses, they wanted to show the country that they're a good football team. They did it (ran up the score) to make a statement, and it doesn't bother me at all that they did it."
Other than 153 rushing yards by David Thompson, Oklahoma State was ineffective in every facet of the game.
"Burn the film," said Cowboy head coach Bob Simmons. "We're not going to watch it."
Simmons will never see his team fumble the ball away three times in the first 24 minutes, two seconds -- the first two recovered by Texas nose guard Chris Akins. He will never see Texas score on 11 consecutive possessions.
"I think they might have been intimidated a little bit because it seemed like they were kind of backing up on some plays," Williams said. "We were ready, and we just took it right to them."
Texas's first score came when Williams went three yards over the left guard for the first of his three touchdowns, establishing an inability by the Cowboy defense to stop any of Texas running backs. Texas ended up with eight rushing touchdowns -- two by Priest Holmes and one by Mitchell, Brown and Chris Butcher. Even when Texas tried to grind out the clock in the second half, they scored 30 points.
"Once we got them down, we didn't let up," Brown said. "And I didn't think [Oklahoma State was] fighting as hard as they could have, and we ended up scoring 71 points."
Texas' only touchdown pass came at the end of the first half in a fashion that summed up OSU's helplessness on defense. Before the play, penalties forced Texas back to their own 30-yard line with less than 30 seconds left in the half.
But Williams took the handoff through the middle and then made his way to the right sideline, sprinting 56 yards before getting pushed out of bounds at the OSU 14-yard line. Quarterback Richard Walton completed 4 of 6 passes substituting for Brown and then lofted a pass to Mike Scarborough in the right corner of the end zone.
Scarborough, who had a splint on his injured thumb, leaped up and bobbled the ball before catching it and getting both feet in. The touchdown gave the Horns a 41-14 halftime lead.
Mackovic said after the game that his only regret was that the offense was unable to work on the passing game as much as he would have liked. But when they did work on it, they got results.
Texas receiver Mike Adams caught the longest pass of his career on a 68-yard post pattern in the first half, and Scarborough had 58 receiving yards in his first career start. After talk of a possible benching earlier in the week, Brown played one his best games of the year.
"James did an excellent job," Mackovic said. "Anytime you come off a game like last week, it helps to come back and play this well."
After a dismal performance a week earlier, and a losing streak, that could probably be said for the whole team.
"You feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders," said Texas linebacker Tyson King. "We've been losing, and people have been talking about us. The fans have been upset with the defense and for good reason. Now to come up and have a big game like this, it feels good."
BRIAN DAVIS
Daily Texan Staff
One quarterback silenced his critics, one tailback had his first 100-yard day in six games, and one fullback simply did the expected.
All in all, Texas' "BMW" offense, comprising quarterback James Brown, tailback Shon Mitchell and fullback Ricky Williams, keyed an offense that torched Oklahoma State for 624 yards in a 57-point rout.
By the end of the first half, sports information officials were dusting off the record books in order to sort through the rubble and see where the severity of Saturday's romp ranked in Longhorn history. The offensive output was the most ever in the Texas head coach John Mackovic era, and it was the second-highest total in school history.
"Every time we were out there, we scored," said Williams, who had 156 yards and three touchdowns. "The holes were big, the QBs did a great job of passing the ball, and the line held them out pretty good. We had a good game plan also."
The game plan seemed to be: run Williams left, run Mitchell right and have Brown throw to just about anybody. Out of the 12 scoring drives, only two lasted more than 2:00 in length. Oklahoma State begged to be scored on after turning the ball over three times in its own territory in the first half.
The direct result was two touchdowns and a field goal off the three first-half turnovers as Texas kept its composure throughout the debacle.
With the game well in hand, the Longhorns went back to polishing up the basic draws, counters, trap and screen plays that make any basic offense go.
"I really think that if we were using our whole offense, we would have thrown the ball about 15 times more," Mackovic said. "I thought we had some great set-ups with our passes. We wanted to throw just a little bit to keep them off-balance so they wouldn't gang up on the line of scrimmage."
The Longhorns may have been running basic plays, but the sheer disorientation of the Cowboys' defense was what keyed the 38-yard run by Mitchell and the 56-yard sprint by Williams. Nevertheless, the big day by the running backs is just what the offense needed after being stifled for only 111 yards against Virginia last week.
The 117-yard, one touchdown day by Mitchell was his best performance since a 106-yard day against Baylor last Thanksgiving.
"It was just a great game," Mitchell said. "We were focused, so we were ready to come back from two losses. We lost our confidence in some of the non-conference games, but we came back. Everybody played excellently, and we should play like that every time."
This past week, both Mackovic and Brown have had to answer questions about the quarterback position. Although it never was a "controversy," the issue became hotly debated on the Austin talk-show circuit and in the area newspapers.
Should Mackovic make the switch to backup Richard Walton after Brown struggled against Virginia and threw three interceptions or should he let Brown simply get back in the saddle to get back into the groove?
Brown's response to the petty controversy: a 12-for-16, 232-yard performance with the longest pass being a 68-yard strike to flanker Mike Adams streaking to the end zone.
"I didn't think that it was a big deal," Brown said. "Maybe coach Mackovic mentioned it to see how I was going to react and to raise my level of play, but I know what I need to do and that's try to win ball games."
With all cylinders of the offense clicking, Mackovic saw fit to get third-teamers like quarterback Marty Cherry, running back Chris Butcher and offensive lineman Roger Roesler into the game for some experience. All performed well while the offense was in cruise control as the night wore on.
"The whole team was talking about how they didn't want the game to be a close game," Williams said. "I don't think that coach wanted to, but we wanted to run the score up for ourselves. We're tired of people saying that we can't win the big game or that we're jerks because we tried to run the score up.
"We're just trying to change the attitude about this team. Instead of playing down to the other teams' level, we're going to come out and play hard every week."
Shaking out of the doldrums for 624 yards and nine touchdowns is a good way for the Longhorns to start.
Oklahoma State 7 7 0 0 -- 14
Texas 17 24 16 14 -- 71
Texas Williams 3 run (Dawson kick), 4:08
Texas FG Dawson 48, 6:14
OK State Mayes 29 pass from T.Jones (Sydnes kick), 11:21
Texas Williams 23 run (Dawson kick), 11:44
Texas J.Brown 1 run (Dawson kick), :05
Texas P.Holmes 2 run (Dawson kick), 5:40
Texas FG Dawson 38, 10:58
OK State Thompson 54 run (Sydnes kick), 13:03
Texas Scarborough 14 pass from Walton (Dawson kick), 14:53
Texas FG Dawson 43, 3:54
Texas Williams 7 run (Dawson kick), 4:09
Texas P.Holmes 1 run (kick failed), 10:41
Texas Mitchell 38 run (Dawson kick), :16
Texas Butcher 3 run (Dawson kick), 7:37
A--67,414.
OSU Texas
First Downs 15 27
Rushes-Yards 42-183 45-344
Passing 79 280
Comp-Att-Int 9-19-1 17-23-1
Return Yards 8 48
Punts-Avg 7-40.9 2-46.0
Fumbles-Lost 6-4 1-0
Penalties-Yards 6-40 10-96
Time of Possession 30:43 29:17
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS
RUSHING
Oklahoma State - D.Thompson 20-153, K.Brown 7-19, Richardson 5-14,
Aikins 1-1, T.Jones 9-(-4).
Texas - Williams 13-156, Mitchell 12-117, P.Holmes 10-44,
Butcher 7-31, J.Brown 2-0, Cherry 1-(-4).
PASSING
Oklahoma State - T.Jones 8-15-1 72, Chaloupka 1-4-0 7.
Texas - J.Brown 12-16-1 232, Walton 4-6-0 43, Cherry 1-1-0 5.
RECEIVING
Oklahoma State - Mayes 2-38, Pfieffer 2-5, Richardson 1-9, D.Thompson 1-8,
Grissom 1-8, Love 1-7, Richardson 1-4.
Texas - Scarborough 4-58, P.Holmes 3-54, Adams 2-76, Lewis 2-(-1),
Mitchell 1-39, Scott 1-26, Williams 1-12, Fitzgerald 1-7,
Butcher 1-5, McGarity 1-4.