Rece Davis and Pete Thamel broke down their thoughts on the highly anticipated Week 13 matchup on Saturday between No. 22 Mizzou and No. 8 Oklahoma.
The Tigers and Sooners will clash in Norman at noon ET on ABC, with high stakes everywhere you look, especially for 8-2 Oklahoma. The Sooners still have their College Football Playoff hopes intact after knocking off Alabama in Tuscaloosa last week, so the goal 7 days later for OU will be not to suffer any kind of letdown against a really good Tigers team.
Mizzou is out of Playoff contention but is a solid 7-3 and wants to finish the regular season strong while possibly playing spoiler against an old rival like Oklahoma.
Davis, who hosts College GameDay on Saturday morning, and Thamel, an ESPN college football insider, had their own views of what they believe will happen.
“The Sooners are going to have to come back to Earth,” said Davis right off the top during their College GameDay Podcast earlier this week.
He also said that Oklahoma will need to get its offense going, after only having “200 yards of offense” despite upsetting Alabama. The number was actually 212 total yards, but Davis’s point was that the Sooners’ shaky offense was masked by the final result last week.
Thamel knows Mizzou can run the ball with a vengeance with Ahmad Hardy, but it’s the other side of the ball that caught his attention.
“I feel like Mizzou’s defense is uniquely equipped to handle (OU quarterback) John Mateer,” Thamel said. “That said, I can’t pull the trigger on an upset here. I will take Oklahoma in a close one.”
Davis agreed with Thamel, also taking the Sooners in a close game and pointing out that it’s been a really long time since Mizzou won in Norman. The Tigers won’t win in Norman on Saturday either, Davis said, although both see a close game that the home team will pull out.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
