Conference: American
Season Record: 1-0
Last Week's Opponent: Tulane (W 38-31)
It's a rare occasion that Oklahoma takes a road trip to an American Conference school but with the fertile recruiting ground in and around the Tulsa area at play this weekend's trip to play the Golden Hurricane just makes sense. Multiple players on OU's roster hale from the Tulsa area, including a handful of starters and key contributors.
Offense
Sophomore quarterback Dane Evans passed for 438 yards last week against Tulane. That was good enough to rank the Golden Hurricane with the nation's 4th best passing performance of college football's first week. Keevan Lucas was Evans' top receiver by hauling in 13 passes for 233 yards and 3 scores. His performance earned him All-Conference honors for the week and put him on the priority watch list for Oklahoma's defense. In a complete change of scheme from the Louisiana Tech game, Oklahoma will look to defend the pass first and the rush second against Tulsa. This will be the first test of the season for the OU secondary with Julian Wilson at corner and Ahmad Thomas at safety. That's not to say that the Golden Hurricane can't run the ball though. Sophomore running back Tavarreon Dickerson averaged 5.5 yards per carry last weekend but there's no doubt that the bread and butter of Bill Blankenship's offense is the passing game.
Defense
Tulane posted 516 total yards against the Tulsa defense, including 254 on the ground at a pace of 8.5 yards per carry. The Sooners averaged 7.4 yards per carry against Louisiana Tech and it looks like they should at least duplicate that on Saturday morning.
Sophomore linebacker Trent Martin led Tulsa with 12 tackles against Tulane and junior safety Michael Mudoh was just behind with 10 take downs. Senior safety Demarco Nelson nabbed the game winning interception in the second overtime against Tulane and left the field a hero.
The entire Tulsa defense looks to be overpowered by a physical Oklahoma offensive line and rushing attack. Whereas the Sooner defense will need to change schemes. a bit by adding an extra defender in the secondary more frequently and bringing some disguised blitzes, their offensive game plan should practically be the same as LA Tech. We'll get more into this on our offensive preview but I would expect the only adjustments would be what ever packages that they added to the offense to try in a game, but not from necessity.
Oklahoma was won seven consecutive games against Tulsa with an average margin of victory of 37 points. Last year the Sooners won 62-21 in Norman. OU has an 18-7-1 overall record against the Golden Hurricane.