Great start for Bison at 2-0, but much more work ahead

Two trips to Kansas to open the season resulted in wins for Oklahoma Baptist and the football team has opened the 2014 campaign at 2-0.

This includes a 62-37 blowout at the University of St. Mary last weekend.

But not all wins are created equal.

Bison coach Chris Jensen said the difference in how you feel about a win is how you played the game.

“The first win felt good,” Jensen said.  “Everything seemed to be clicking and going well. So that felt good.

“But the second game didn’t feel right.  We gave up big plays in the passing game and then we put the ball on the ground a couple of times, so you walk off the field, even though it was a win, it was an ugly win.”

Oklahoma Baptist’s Joe Shaw had this 63-yard reception against University of St. Mary. Photo courtesy OBU Sports Information.

Even so, Jensen spoke about perspective.

“But you just have to focus on getting better every week.  You just have to go to the film.  I know this having done this for awhile, it’s never as good as it seems and its never as bad as it seems.  We got to evaluate the film, though, and I’d much rather be 2-0 than to be 0-2 right now.”

OBU put up its highest single-game point total since the program’s revival and the offense has looked good.

The Bison ground game is something opposing defenses will be working throughout the season for which to find an answer.  OBU scored five rushing touchdowns in each of the first two contests.

Jordan Barnes had 115 yards rushing and a touchdown while Dawson Myers also topped the century mark with 109 rushing yards and a TD as well.  Frankie Edwards, who led the team in rushing in Week 1, also had 58 yards and a touchdown.

Having that many quality backs is something Jensen said is a big deal.

“They did a phenomenal job being able to find the holes,” Jensen said.  “We want to win the war of attrition and we want to wear the defense down and get our biggest gains in the third and fourth quarter, after we’ve been pounding on them a little bit.

“It’s good to be able to have three backs that will be able to go in there and carry the load. We had a couple of ball security concerns the other day with those guys, but we’ll get that fixed this week in practice.”

Blake Woodard ultimately came out of the preseason and won the starting role as the Bison quarterback.  He was 10-of -17 passing against St. Mary, and four of those 10 completions were for scores.

“Blake does a good job of finding the open receiver.  But Coach Brickman has done a god job preparing him.

“The type of offense we run, our passing game is built for big plays.  With the type of running we do and we give the defense a lot of different looks, then it’s easy to get big plays in the passing game as they start screwing safeties down and trying to stop the run, it’s easy for those wide receivers to get behind people.”

The Bison kept a good USM offense to just 37 points last week, similar to the 36 OBU gave up to the Spires in 2013.

And Jensen talked about the respect he had for the opposition while saying he was happy with what his defense showed.

“We felt good as far as stopping the run,” Jensen said.  “And that’s what we wanted to do.

“And our defense is set up to put pressure on the quarterback and I think St. Mary did a phenomenal job of getting the ball out of the quarterback’s hands pretty quickly.  (USM quarterback Josh Ervin) didn’t have to stand back there and go through a lot of reads in their passing game.  Most of their stuff was screen passes, quick passes where he got the ball out of his hands quickly or he found one-on-one matchups.

“I think their quarterback did a great job of putting them in a good position to be successful from the line of scrimmage.”

Jensen reiterated that the feeling of this win was different.  And although having a 2-0 record is where the program wanted to be at this point in the season, there is more work to be done.

“We don’t feel like we played our best game,” Jensen said.  “And ultimately you walk off the field feeling disappointed if you don’t play well.  It doesn’t matter what the scoreboard says really, whether you’re up or down.  If you play well and if you like you played your very best and you were prepared, that’s when you walk off the field with the best feeling.

“The good thing is that we get to play again this week.  We have a chance to correct some mistakes and we have a chance to get better.  And we need to.  Because Missouri Baptist has a good football coming in.  They’ve dropped their first two games, but they’ve played some good opponents.”

The Bison will face Missouri Baptist for their home opener at noon on Saturday.