NORMAN, Okla. — Oklahoma took the field without its usual pregame ritual of charging out the tunnel at the conclusion of an introduction video that gets the crowd and players pumped up.
The atmosphere was quite literally dampened, with thousands of fans taking off early because of a storm that brought strong winds, rain and enough lightning to cause a delay of 1 hour and 35 minutes.
Then the performance was anything but normal.
The Sooners’ 39-game home winning streak — the longest in the NCAA Bowl Subdivision and ninth-longest in FBS history — was halted Saturday night by Texas Tech’s 41-38 victory. Along with it, Oklahoma’s season that started with national title aspirations and a preseason No. 1 ranking suffered a significant blow.
The Sooners tumbled to No. 9 in the BCS rankings on Sunday — the second-highest one-loss team — while Texas Tech moved into the rankings for the first time at No. 20.
“Every team’s going to face adversity and it’s the good teams that deal with it the best,” said linebacker Travis Lewis, a defensive captain.
“So, hopefully we’ve got strong guys that are going to deal with it the right way.”
The Sooners don’t have long to sulk. Next up is a trip to No. 8 Kansas State (7-0, 4-0 Big 12), where they’ll need to win to keep from losing control of their own destiny in the conference title chase.
“Kansas State will beat the living heck out of us if we don’t make improvement, along with anyone else we’re going to play — here at home or anywhere. If this doesn’t show you that, then you’re pretty unrealistic,” Stoops said.
“But if we can ... show some character and make some improvements from this, who
Sports, Pages 21 on 10/24/2011