Brent Venables' Sooners becoming comfortable playing in close games

Fourth-year head coach Brent Venables and the Oklahoma Sooners earned another hard-fought victory in Week 14 against the LSU Tigers, winning 17-13 in Norman on Saturday. The four-point victory very likely puts OU into the College Football Playoff at 10-2 overall and 6-2 in the SEC.

The Sooners have made a habit of winning close games and gritty matchups in their "November to Remember", with gutsy four-quarter wins over Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri and now LSU. With so much on the line in each of the last four games, Oklahoma took the hard road, got grimy, and have likely played their way into the CFP bracket.

After Saturday's win, Venables was asked in his postgame press conference about all of OU's close wins this month. He responded by praising his team for making the plays that had to be made, over and over again.

"If anything we’re comfortable when it ain’t going great," Venables said. "I think that this is a team that has poise in those moments. Being battle-tested, I think there’s confidence in the things we’ve had to go through and overcome. Again, the teams that we’re playing have the ability to punch back. It’s not like we’re going against a bunch of chumps. We’re going against good players, elite players, elite coaches. This is a team that, again, we described them, they know how to find a way in these moments. Keep playing, keep throwing punches back. Certainly it’s prepared us."

It says a lot about this program that one calendar year ago, OU was 6-6, and they looked like they might be lacking direction. Fast forward twelve months, and the Sooners are 10-2 with an invitation to the playoff likely on its way in a week's time.

Oklahoma is still a very flawed team, mainly on offense, but the ability to step up and make it happen in the pivotal moments has been there for the last month, a month in which the Sooners ran the gauntlet and got the job done by winning in tight quarters again and again.

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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Oklahoma's Brent Venables praises his team's play in close games