Tramel's ScissorTales: Big 12 football rankings ask if TCU can go 9-0 in the conference
Are the Texas Christian Horned Frogs something special? We’ll soon see.
Is TCU something historic? Looking like it.
TCU dominated Texas 17-10 Saturday night to raise its record to 10-0, including 7-0 in the Big 12. I know, 17-10 doesn’t sound dominating, but it was.
Are the Frogs driving down Bob Stoops Boulevard? Is TCU a reasonable facsimile of the 2000 Sooners, who came from far off the national radar and stormed to the national championship with a 13-0 season?
That’s a longshot. The Big 12 two decades ago likely was college football’s best conference. The Big 12’s dominance wasn’t perennial; the leagues tended to swap that status year to year. But the Big 12 took a backseat to no other conference. Sweep through the Big 12, and you were ultra-tested. Four Big 12 teams were in The Associated Press rankings’ top five at some point in the season.
Those days are gone. These days, the Southeastern Conference reigns, and an unbeaten Big 12 champion would not even be favored to win a national semifinal.
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But TCU’s 7-0 conference start is quite impressive and even more unusual. This is the 12th year of the Big 12’s nine-game conference schedule.
Only the 2016 Sooners went through the league unscathed. Even more impressive, TCU is just the fifth Big 12 team to get to 7-0 during those dozen years. The other four: 2011 Oklahoma State (finished 8-1); 2012 Kansas State (finished 8-1); 2015 OSU (finished 7-2); and 2016 OU.
Can TCU join the 2016 Sooners as the only teams ever to go 9-0 in the Big 12? The Horned Frogs play at Baylor this Saturday, then host Iowa State. Of the four previous teams that reached 7-0, only the 2016 Sooners made it to 8-0.
But the Frogs have navigated the tough part of their schedule. Baylor is in a three-way tie for third place, at 4-3, but in reality is no better than the fifth-best team in the conference. Iowa State is in last place.
"Nobody had any expectations for this football team at all, other than ourselves," said TCU coach Sonny Dykes, hired away from Southern Methodist 50 weeks ago. "We understand that's the way it is. Our deal has been, 'Hey, bring it on.' If we've got to win 'em all, fine; let's try to win 'em all."
Let’s get to the Big 12 rankings:
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Berry Tramel's Big 12 football power rankings
1. TCU (10-0, 7-0): TCU’s dominance of Texas means at least two things — 1) the Frogs have a shot at the College Football Playoff even with a stumble, as long as they finish 12-1; and 2) the Frogs almost surely can avoid the No. 4 seed in the playoff, as long as they win out. That likely would mean TCU can avoid Georgia in the semifinals.
2. Kansas State (7-3, 5-2): KSU’s 31-3 rout of Baylor on Saturday night was not as impressive as the Wildcats’ 48-0 thrashing of OSU a few weeks ago, but it’s in the same zip code.
3. Oklahoma State (7-3, 4-3): The Cowboys’ schedule was front-loaded. OSU beat Iowa State 20-14 Saturday and still gets second-division teams OU and West Virginia.
4. Texas (6-4, 4-3): Quite the enigma. Three offensive points vs. TCU. Three points in the second half at OSU. Three points in the second vs. Kansas State.
5. Baylor (6-4, 4-3): The Bears discovered what TCU and OSU learned. K-State backup Will Howard is a heck of a quarterback.
6. Texas Tech (5-5, 3-4): The Red Raiders can finish strong. They finish with Iowa State and OU.
7. Kansas (6-4, 3-4): KU technically remains in the Big 12 championship hunt. Let’s see. If KU beats both Texas and K-State, the Jayhawks would finish 5-4 and could win a tiebreaker with some help.
8. Oklahoma (5-5, 2-5): Not much in the way of good wins. Kansas is OU’s only victory over a team with a winning record.
9. West Virginia (4-6, 2-5): The Mountaineers must beat Kansas State and OSU to become bowl eligible.
10. Iowa State (4-6, 1-6): The Cyclones must beat Texas Tech and TCU to become bowl eligible.
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WVU’s Brown talks victory over OU
West Virginia beat OU 23-20 Saturday in a huge game for Mountaineer coach Neal Brown, whose future is in doubt. Here is part of Brown’s postgame press conference, with some of my responses:
Brown’s opening statement: “Huge win. Since joining the Big 12 in 2012, there have been several really good football teams and great players play here, but this team is the first team to get it done (beat OU). That was kind of our talking point all week. Not very many opportunities late in the season to be able to do something for the first time. The guys took that to heart. I’m proud. Proud of the staff, proud of the players for getting that done.”
Tramel: Indeed, WVU was 0-9 against the Sooners since joining the Big 12. The Mountaineers have played a variety of closely-contested games against OU, particularly in Morgantown. They finally made it happen.
Brown on close calls against OU: “We owed them. We owed them. We really felt like we outplayed them last year, and to lose that game in that fashion, then to turn around and get it done, a last-second field goal today was extremely rewarding.”
Tramel: A quick reminder. OU won 16-13 a year ago. The Mountaineers led 10-7 at halftime. WVU took a 13-10 lead with 5:21 left in the third quarter. OU took possession with 1:56 left in the third quarter, and Spencer Rattler took the Sooners on a 16-play, 62-yard drive that took 8:11 and ended with Gabe Brkic’s 35-yard field goal to tie. West Virginia then drove into OU territory, but a shotgun snap miscue resulted in a 21-yard loss, and the Mountaineers eventually punted. Rattler then directed a 14-play, 80-yard drive that took the game’s final 3:39 and ended on Brkic’s 30-yard field goal. So back-to-back OU-WVU games ended with walkoff field goals.
Brown on WVU’s gameplan: “It was a three-phase win. We had a plan coming into it, where offensively we really wanted to control the clock. We knew ... explosive plays are hard versus them, but we felt like we could kind of grind it out. Time of possession is not something we spend a whole lot of time talking about usually, but we knew it was going to be important today. And made first downs. If we can keep getting first downs, then we felt really good about our opportunity to win.”
Tramel: The Mountaineers had 25 first downs. They converted seven of 19 third downs (OU was 1-of-11). And the time of possession indeed was one-sided — WVU 37:15, OU 22:45. The Mountaineers ran 91 plays, the Sooners 68. That’s not a big deal if an offense produces big plays, but OU seldom did.
Brown on the West Virginia defense: “Oklahoma was 1-of-13 on third and fourth down today. That had been an area where we had really struggled statistically coming into this game, but they go 1-of-13, and we held them to one score (in the second half). I don’t know how many possessions they had in the second half, but they had one score — a touchdown and a two-point conversion — and that was it. We bent, but we didn’t break. We got off the field. Offensively, we ran the ball; 203 yards, we ran it 50 times to get that, so we weren’t super explosive by any means, but it enabled us to control the clock and keep the defense off the field. I thought we wore them down. On that last drive, that was a toughness drive — mental and physical toughness. We ran almost six minutes off the clock, they used all three timeouts, and we’re able to walk off with the win.”
Tramel: We’ve well-documented the Sooners’ inability to stop the run. It meant defeat a week earlier against Baylor, and it meant defeat at West Virginia.
Brown on the WVU kicking game: “I think sometimes it goes and people don’t notice it, but this was huge. This was a field position game. (Freshman punter) Oliver Straw has been great all year. We had four punts inside the 20, so they had to play with their backs against the end zone a lot. The fake punt. We’re down seven points and then executed the fake punt. Sam James got the first down, just barely, but he got it. That extended that drive, and we go down and score to tie it up on that drive. I thought the kickoff return by Sam James in the first half was huge. We blocked it really well, and that kind of got us going. We go down and score right after that when it was 10-0. It was kind of misleading offensively because we didn’t go three-and-out, but we didn’t score points. To get that kickoff return and follow it up with the touchdown was huge. Then Casey Legg comes out and kicks his second walkoff field goal this year to win versus the second quality opponent. We beat Baylor on a field goal, too.”
Tramel: This was a field-position game. No points scored until OU’s Zach Schmit kicked a 32-yard field goal with 9:42 left in the second quarter. No touchdown scored until OU tailback Eric Gray’s 12-yard run 66 seconds before halftime. Both teams moved the ball relatively well, but they usually had a long way to go, so the scoring was minimized.
Brown on the WVU fans: “Big win, we’re super excited as you can imagine. The locker room was fired up. I know we’ve been waiting on this for a while against Oklahoma, so I hope Mountaineer Nation can enjoy it.”
Tramel: They must have enjoyed it in their living rooms. Milan-Puskar Stadium was about half full, though WVU announced an attendance of 50,281 in the 60,000-seat facility. The students left early on the rainy day that was mostly miserable. There wasn’t much atmosphere. OU is accustomed to rowdy, nighttime crowds in Morgantown. But not Saturday.
Brown on playing sophomore quarterback Garrett Greene: “We gave him some more snaps during the week because I thought he played pretty well last week. We knew if we were going to win the game, the only (way) we were going to win the game was by controlling the clock and running the football. If you’re (in) that type of game, even though we’ve been able to run the ball well outside of a couple games, we felt like we were going to need the extra guy (running quarterback). They really started pressuring us early in the game with edge pressure. A running quarterback is a much better answer for that than some other things. The weather played a factor, too. Most of the time when it's wet and you’re playing on Astroturf, the passing game isn’t affected, but it was steady. You get a certain number of balls, but when it gets late, those balls start getting slick, too. He (Greene) always has energy, and I thought the drive before half, he made a couple of plays on that. He still made some mistakes, but we were able to get out of some of those. I’m happy for him. He waited his time, and he didn’t complain. He went in there and did a nice job.”
Tramel: Greene was the difference in the game. Starting quarterback J.T. Daniels was ineffective, and OU indeed seemed capable of making life miserable for the less-mobile Daniels. Now West Virginia has a decision to make. Does it go with Greene or Daniels this week against Kansas State?
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ISU’s Campbell talks about loss to OSU
OSU beat Iowa State 20-14, carving out a victory when things looked precarious much of the day.
Here are some of Cyclone coach Matt Campbell’s postgame comments, with my responses:
Campbell on the difference quarterback Spencer Sanders made for Oklahoma State. Sanders missed the Cowboys’ despondent loss at Kansas last week and the first half vs. Iowa State: "Well, you get a guy that's a veteran. You get a guy that's very confident, and he makes some confident throws and plays. You saw his ability to consistently move the football, and you give him a lot of credit for that. He's a really talented football player. He's been a great competitor to compete against, and he's a guy that's played a lot of football. He's had to work through tough times, and he's a senior that is a guy that made plays.”
Tramel: Campbell knows what we all know. OSU was cooked without Sanders, who has had an injured shoulder but replaced starter Gunnar Gundy in the third quarter.
Campbell on ISU losing by small margins throughout the year: “The frustration is you sink your teeth into that. We practice, it's what we do, it's who we try to be in the offseason to who we try to be in the spring to who we try to be in fall camp. Those are things that we spend a lot of time with, and it comes down to growing through that.”
Tramel: The Cyclones are 1-6 in the Big 12. Iowa State lost to OU 27-13 two weeks ago. That was the most lopsided ISU loss. The other five defeats? All by seven points or less.
Campbell on receiver Jaylin Noel’s dropped pass in the final two minutes, when Noel seemed free for a touchdown: "It goes with the theme of the day. You're right there to make the plays and we're, for whatever reason, our ball security, three of them in the red zone or inside the 50-yard-line when you drive the ball up and down the field. Man, a couple plays here and there, you've got to be able to make the plays."
Tramel: The Cyclones lost 24-21 at Texas, after star Xavier Hutchinson dropped a wide-open deep ball that would have provided a touchdown in the final two minutes. Then the same thing happened to the cursed ‘Clones. Noel was behind the OSU secondary and with about four minutes left when he flat dropped Hunter Dekkers’ deep ball in what should have been a 78-yard, go-ahead touchdown.
Campbell on how he evaluates his offense's performance: “Well, you can't turn it over. What are you going to evaluate? Five turnovers? Evaluate that. It is what it is. You can't win football games that way. You move the ball up and down the field and you turn the ball over five times; you can't win football games that way. It's disappointing, obviously."
Tramel: That’s the game. Protecting the ball. OSU now is tied for 82nd in turnover margin, so it’s not like the Cowboys are magnets. But ISU is tied for 104th in turnover margin among the 131 teams in the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. No way the Cowboys win without a plus-three in takeaways Saturday.
Campbell on his seniors and dealing with close losses: "I think the hard part for me is not for me or for coaches, it's for our seniors. And as I just said in there, next week is Senior Day, and why we're even close is because of our senior class. I get it. I would understand why our fans are frustrated, I would understand why everybody would be frustrated, because we all want to win. What I also have seen behind the closed doors is that I look at our senior class, and you look at them again today. Could Xavier Hutchinson have done any more for this team? Could O'Rien Vance do any more for this team? Could Anthony Johnson do anymore? Tayvonn Kyle stepped up in a big way today. Kendall Jackson steps up in a big way. And you look at these seniors and what I have seen and witnessed, they’re the only reason we're right there."
Tramel: I remain a big Campbell fan. His turnaround of Iowa State football is impressive, even with a 1-6 Big 12 record in 2021. Campbell’s conference record over seven seasons in Ames is 32-29. Do you know how difficult it is to have a winning record at Iowa State? Campbell is a big-time coach, and his seniors indeed have created something quite extraordinary.
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The List: Thunder-Knickerbockers
The Thunder’s 145-135 victory over the Knicks in a Madison Square Garden matinee Sunday was an offensive explosion that reverberated throughout the NBA.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 37 points on 13-of-22 shooting. Luguentz Dort scored 24 points on 8-of-11 shooting. Josh Giddey scored 24 points on 10-of-14 shooting, with 10 rebounds and 12 assists. Jeremiah Robinson-Earl scored 17 points on 7-of-9 shooting.
You get the idea. Here are my five favorite statistical developments from the Thunder’s storming of New York:
1. Three-point shooting: The Thunder made 17 of 31 from deep; nine players made 3-pointers. The worst 3-point shooters for OKC on Sunday were Santa Clara Williams (0-of-1), Dort (2-of-5) and Isaiah Joe (2-of-5). On Friday night, the Thunder made 15 of 36 from deep. Suddenly, OKC is shooting 33 percent from 3-pointers and is all the way up to 25th in the 30-team NBA, after jockeying with the Lakers for last place most of the season.
2. Field-goal percentage: The Thunder shot 62.5 percent from the field against New York. The Thunder record is 63.6. OKC as a team is shooting 46.4 percent from the field, which ranks 21st. The Thunder ought to be better. When your star player is an efficient player like SGA, you should rank higher.
3. Giddey’s triple-double: Giddey joined Wilt Chamberlain as the only players in NBA history to post triple doubles in their first two career games at Madison Square Garden. I suppose there are some lists you want to solitarily share with Wilt, but for the most part, such association suggests basketball excellence.
4. Knicks’ first quarter: New York scored 48 points in the first quarter. That’s a franchise record for one of the league’s original teams. And still, the Thunder won going away. Over the next 23:16 of game time, OKC outscored the Knicks 84-53.
5. 145 points: The Thunder’s point total was its highest in almost five years. Don’t look now, but the Thunder is up to 17th in offensive efficiency in the NBA.
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Mailbag: OU-West Virginia reversal
Some officiating decisions from OU-West Virginia drew some scrutiny from fans.
Chris: “On the play where West Virginia had the ball at 4th-and-17, and OU got called for offsides and initially WVU was called for a late hit in the end zone, was any explanation given as to why it was called off? It not only looked like a late hit but borderline targeting.
"The better team won, but OU or Texas, for that matter, aren't going to get any breaks from the officials until they leave the conference.”
Tramel: It was 4th-and-15, the Mountaineers on the OU 36-yard line, early fourth quarter, the Sooners leading 20-13. OU’s Gracen Halton clearly jumped offsides, and Mountaineer quarterback Garrett Greene took a shot downfield. But his pass for Sam James was off target, and OU’s C.J. Coldon easily intercepted.
Coldon just stopped. Didn’t run. Didn’t go down. A WVU receiver sprinted his way and popped Coldon just as he took a knee, and an official called a personal foul penalty.
The officials huddled and waved off the personal-foul penalty, without explanation. But I thought it originally was a bad call. Defenders have to go down. Or step out of bounds. In theory, if Coldon had just stood there, and no WVU player approached, the clock would keep running and the game would end.
Right before the WVU player arrived, the Sooner takes a knee. I thought the flag should never have been thrown.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Big 12 football power rankings: TCU a legit contender after Week 11
