Sooners Jump to 

Early Lead and 

Crush the Indians

September 10, 2000

by: Jason Waganer

Josh Heupel returned to his 1999 form Saturday night as the Oklahoma Sooners whipped Arkansas State 45-7. Heupel connected on 24 of 32 passes for 301 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. He also ran for another one yard score.

With the three TD passes, Heupel is now tied with former Sooner QB (and current Sooner running backs coach) Cale Gundy for most TD passes in a career (35). Heupel still has nine regular season games left to pile onto his record.

"It's a tribute to what's gone on with the program and the type of offense we run here," said Heupel, who has played only 14 games at OU after transferring from junior college. "I thought I did a better job of getting our offense in the right situation tonight. We had much more rhythm to our offense tonight."

OU punt returner and strong safety J.T. Thatcher also had a record-setting night in Saturday's game. Thatcher set the Sooner single game punt return record last night with 160 yards on five returns. One of the five returns went for 66 yards and a touchdown. It was Thatcher's second career punt return for a touchdown.

"It was a middle call and I saw I had to make one guy miss, so I made him miss," Thatcher said. "I went to the outside and saw the sidelines and just went to the house."

OU (2-0) made it look easy against Arkansas State (0-2), a Big West team that took North Carolina State of the ACC to double overtime last week. The Sooners, favored by 32 points, rolled up 533 net yards, holding the Indians to just 84 yards rushing and 275 net yards.

"We were sharper than we were a week ago," said OU coach Bob Stoops, who celebrated his 40th birthday Saturday. "The one area where we were not was penalties [11 for 95 yards]. We have to play smarter than that, but there were a lot of good parts in this game."

Stoops said that the Sooners will use the next two weeks (they are idle next week) to work on getting better before facing TCU on Sept. 23 in Norman.

"We've got a lot to improve on," said Stoops. "We can sit now and analyze these two games, what we need to do, what's been good and bad and really emphasize improvement. We need to make some improvement this week in many areas, really."

OU had the game won in the first 22 minutes of the game. The Sooners scored on three out of four possessions then added Thatcher's punt return for a TD giving them a 28-0 lead. From then on, the game was a bore. 

Arkansas State put together a nice drive late in the first half to make the score 28-7 at half.

The second half was all Sooners. Josh Heupel connected with Andre Woolfolk for a 35 yard TD pass early in the third quarter to extend OU's lead to 35-7. 

In the fourth quarter, Sooner freshman sensation Renaldo Works scored on a 75-yard run.  Works, who ran for 98 yards and three touchdowns in his debut against UTEP, finished with 109 yards on 12 carries.

Tim Duncan added a 26-yard field goal with 4:46 left in the game to complete the scoring. Duncan missed two field goals earlier in the game from 24 and 47 yards.