Mizzou football vs. Oklahoma came down to key matchup. The Sooners controlled it

Mizzou and Oklahoma have played some clunkers over the years. In the first 38 matchups in this series, only once did a team reach 30 points.

On Saturday, 30 points felt like a distant total. But the Sooners did just enough on both sides of the ball en route to a 17-6 win, putting Mizzou’s razor-thin College Football Playoff hopes in a coffin that was already deep in the ground, laden with nails hammered by Alabama, Vanderbilt and Texas A&M.

“The defense gave us every chance in the world,” coach Eli Drinkwitz said. “We just didn’t get it done.”

Mizzou had the recipe for success: establish the run, control the clock and dominate on defense. There were times when the recipe worked, most notably on the first drive of the game.

The Tigers took over eight minutes off the clock on a 14-play march into the OU red zone. Even though a holding penalty on Keagen Trost killed the drive and forced the Tigers to settle for a short field goal from Robbie Meyer, the journey mattered more than the destination.

In his first game back from a nasty ankle injury suffered against the Commodores, quarterback Beau Pribula didn’t have to do too much with his arm. He completed his first four passes, all of which were either screens or short routes. Ahmad Hardy and Jamal Roberts got going on the ground, which made third downs easier to convert. The mix of short passes and effective runs was a sustainable way of living on offense.

“We came out swinging. We came out punching,” Hardy said. “We were executing.”

The question was whether they could repeat that sort of drive going forward.

The answer was a fairly resounding no.

“We just had zero rhythm, zero creativity,” Drinkwitz said of the offense.

Oklahoma, which entered Saturday ranked No. 2 nationally in run defense, found its footing after Hardy and Roberts churned out positive yardage on the opening drive. Oklahoma coach Brent Venables added a third safety on MU’s second drive to try to stuff the run, and it worked to perfection.

After that, the two teams spent most of their time getting hit behind the line of scrimmage. The Sooners’ defensive line overwhelmed the Tigers’ offensive line, and OU’s linebackers shot through gaps like missiles. Pribula couldn’t connect on several early down throws, either.

That put Mizzou behind schedule, and third-and-longs felt like trying to cross an ocean. After their first drive, the Tigers were a putrid 3-of-15 on third down, mostly because the line to gain was, on average, 8.5 yards away.

“Sometimes, we were too inefficient on first and second down, whether that’s running or passing,” Pribula said. “I feel like we could do a better job of putting us in third-and-manageable situations to keep the offense on the field.”

In Mizzou’s four games against ranked opponents this season, it is 14-for-54 on third down.

The offense had some moments. Pribula completed some intermediate and deep passes to Josh Manning and Kevin Coleman Jr., while Donovan Olugbode drew a couple of pass interference penalties on vertical routes down the sideline.

After their first drive, the Tigers drove the ball inside of OU’s 25-yard line three more times.

It was here that the destination mattered quite a bit.

Mizzou settled for a field-goal attempt on the first two instances. While Meyer’s kick on the opening drive went through the uprights, it appeared to have been tipped at the line of scrimmage.

The screwball boot foreshadowed disaster on his next attempt, which was blocked. Drinkwitz said that, on both of his field-goal attempts, Meyer’s operation time was too slow.

Three plays later, Isaiah Sategna III caught a slant over the middle and proved to be too fast for anyone wearing a white jersey to catch, as he flew down the right sideline for a game-changing 87-yard touchdown.

“It absolutely affected the momentum,” Drinkwitz said.

With time winding down in the first half, Mizzou had the ball at OU’s 3-yard line on third down. After Hardy was stuffed, Drinkwitz called a timeout. Out of the timeout, Oliver Robbins trotted out and kicked a 21-yard field goal to cut OU’s lead to eight with 17 seconds left in the first half.

Drinkwitz wanted to make it a one-possession game entering halftime and prevent Oklahoma from entering the locker room with momentum, he said.

The final missed opportunity near the end zone came late in the fourth quarter, when a likely touchdown bounced off the fingertips of Coleman.

“I thought we stalled too much in the second half,” Pribula said. “We got in the red zone too many times and didn’t convert.”

The breakdown on Sategna’s touchdown was a rare one for a Mizzou defense that played well for most of the afternoon, not to mention the season.

Oklahoma’s first two offensive drives were three-and-outs that combined to lose 7 yards. Toriano Pride Jr. looked like an All-America cornerback, while the front seven was flustering OU quarterback John Mateer and shutting down the Sooners’ rushing attack.

Overall, Oklahoma punted nine times and averaged just 3.2 yards per carry.

“Our goal is to play complementary football and to have each other’s backs no matter what happens,” Chris McClellan said. “We’re always going to have the offense’s back.”

Oftentimes, however, the offense couldn’t do the same. In a game that featured Mizzou getting swallowed up by a sea of anthracite, big-time miscues like the touchdown to Sategna spelled more doom than usual.

By the end of the game, Pribula had made good friends with the natural grass. He was sacked four times, and the team with the most tackles for loss in the nation entering Saturday added eight more on the afternoon. Pribula also tossed a pair of interceptions in the second half.

“I was really proud of the courage he showed,” Drinkwitz said. “I thought he ran hard. I thought he distributed the ball well. I thought he made good decisions for the most part. Ultimately, the two turnovers hurt in the end, but I was proud of the courage he showed to play.”

In a matchup that dates back to the early 20th century, Saturday proved to be a manifestation of history.

In 1889, the U.S. government opened two million acres of land for settlement in present-day Oklahoma, previously known as Indian Territory. The area, called the “Unassigned Lands,” was prime real estate. Under the Homestead Act of 1862, legal settlers could claim 160 acres of land and, as long as they improved the area over the course of five years, could file for a deed of title.

But a certain group of people just couldn’t wait. Some prospective settlers illegally hid on the Unassigned Lands before they were supposed to be open for settlement — they were there before anyone else was in large numbers. These people were called “Sooners.” Nineteen years later, OU adopted it as its nickname.

On Saturday, the football team known as the Sooners exemplified the spirit of its namesake. Although both Oklahoma and Mizzou were near the end zone a handful of times Saturday, the Sooners reached the promised land more than their competition.

Copyright 2025 Columbia Missourian

This story was originally published November 22, 2025 at 7:23 PM with the headline "Mizzou football vs. Oklahoma came down to key matchup. The Sooners controlled it."