Noah Best and Oklahoma O-Line Found Confidence from Lloyd Avant's Big Run vs Texas

NORMAN — Oklahoma hadn't generated an explosive run all season. With time ticking away at the Cotton Bowl, the Sooners needed something uncharacteristic to present itself.

The rushing "attack" — if it could be called that — had put Ben Arbuckle into a dimly lit corner as a play caller. His only option: Ask John Mateer to make every play.

But then something happened early in the third quarter. The Sooners opened a massive hole on the right side A-gap. Lloyd Avant just needed to simply sprint through it. A few seconds and 42 yards later, Avant was taken down at the OU 21-yard line.

The drive ended in three points, but for the offensive line, it gave them confidence for the first time all season.

"You could feel the energy changing," freshman guard Noah Best said on Monday night. "We felt like we had the upper hand there, even though we were still down."

Casually speaking, Best is right. But OU had already begun to show signs of life on the ground as early as the second quarter. But Best knows better than anyone else. He's in the trenches, after all.

"We started running a lot of tempo, getting after (Texas) with a lot of counter. You can tell they were tired out, they didn't want none," Best said.

In order for the Sooners to provide meaning to their season-saving win over Texas, that run — and a handful of other equally important 7-, 8- and 10-yard rushes — Best and the offensive line will have to build off of that feeling they felt when they watched Avant run away from them.

"We had a slow start at the start of the year. But I think the more and more we play together, get more confident, the sky's the limit," Best said.

Arbuckle knows the importance of building off confidence. He stressed over and over during his Tuesday press conference that this week — specifically the response to an emotional win in a rivalry game — must be their "best practice of the year to this date."

"We need the momentum to carry over, but each game is mutually exclusive," Arbuckle said. "If we think we're going to roll into Kentucky and think that just because we did some good things against Texas, that just means we're going to do good things against Kentucky, then we are setting ourselves up for failure."

Best agrees with his offensive coordinator.

"(We've got to build off) the run game. You've got to win off the run game. The more we can work that, the details, the pad level, hands, all that. It'll just keep going. That run only pushed us further. I think there's a lot more to come from the run game. I'd just be ready for that."

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