Oklahoma football: Texas Tech has not needed hocus-pocus to beat Sooners

“There's common threads any time you lose a game, whether it's (Texas) Tech or anybody else,” Stoops said during his weekly news conference Monday.

“There are turnover issues, injury issues, execution issues. ... There isn't anything spiritual or spooky about it, OK? It's just playing ball.”

The No. 17 Sooners (2-1, 0-1 Big 12) return to Texas Tech — where OU has lost three straight games — for the first time since 2009 on Saturday.

Oklahoma, in 13 seasons under Stoops, has lost four of six games played inside Jones AT&T Stadium — the most losses for Stoops in any single venue other than Dallas' Cotton Bowl, where he's coached 14 games and lost five of them.

Some of the Lubbock losses have featured strange moments that worked against Oklahoma.

But the Sooners' last trip to Lubbock? Stoops is dead on: Nothing supernatural. No controversy. No injuries. Oklahoma's 2009 team just received a good old-fashioned walloping from the Red Raiders, to the tune of 41-13.

The only Sooner to start that game who will also start Saturday is senior quarterback Landry Jones, who in 2009 was a redshirt freshman, forced into action because of Sam Bradford's season-ending shoulder injuries weeks earlier.

“I remember it wasn't too fun,” Jones said Monday when asked to recall that November afternoon, when the Sooners, in their new Nike Pro Combat uniforms, trailed 27-6 after three quarters and were beaten in every way possible.

“We had cool uniforms. We looked good. We just didn't play good.”

The Stoops-led squads' struggles at Texas Tech date back to his first season at Oklahoma.

In late November 1999, Tech redshirt freshman quarterback Kliff Kingsbury made his first career start, and the Red Raiders scored 25 unanswered second-half points to come from behind, upset OU and end the regular season a six-win, bowl-eligible team.