NORMAN, Okla. — After a week of Hurricane Francine-altered preparation, Tulane was blown away early on Saturday against 15th-ranked Oklahoma before a valiant comeback fell short.
But neither coach Jon Sumrall nor linebacker Tyler Grubbs pinned the Green Wave’s issues in the 34-19 loss on Saturday at Memorial Stadium on the distractions. The Wave spent Tuesday and Wednesday at the team hotel downtown, shortened Wednesday’s practice at the Saints' indoor facility nearly in half and conducted Thursday’s walk-through on a floor of the downtown Sheraton.
“It would be real easy to say we didn’t have our normal week,” Sumrall said. “Well, who cares? I’m not going to allow that to be an excuse. Was it abnormal? Sure. Was it really goofy and funky for everybody in our program? Yeah. Does the scoreboard care? No.”
The Green Wave went without a first down on three of its first four series and allowed touchdown drives on three of the Sooners’ first five possessions before settling down and giving itself a chance to win in the fourth quarter.
“We clearly started slow, and I don’t know if it was the first road trip or the movement of the week that was not normal, but I’ll look at all of it to see if there’s stuff I could do better to help us address that,” Sumrall said. “Against a team like that, it’s almost impossible to dig yourselves a 21-0 hole and think you have any chance to come back and win.
“That falls on me. I didn’t get us ready to play the game early the right way. … I told everyone in the locker room we have to own what happened, and it starts with me.”
Grubbs dismissed the hurricane excuse.
“I don’t think it affected us at all,” he said. “We had a lot of people come in late (joining the team after spring practice), and being at the hotel brought us closer as a team. We try to look at the positives, so we were excited to be together at the time of a natural disaster and spend time with each other.
“We hurt ourselves more than we should have the whole game. It’s self-inflicted mistakes we can easily fix at practice, and it will help us get these tough wins.”
Tulane certainly flipped the script after the awful beginning, driving 75 yards for touchdowns on each side of halftime to get back in it while holding Oklahoma to one first down total on four straight series in the second half.
The inspired play, which culminated in Grubbs’ 22-yard touchdown interception return to make the score 24-19 early in the fourth quarter, came after more adversity. Redshirt junior safety Bailey Despanie — the Wave’s leading tackler through two games — was ejected for targeting in the second quarter.
“It’s almost like it sort of jolted our guys,” Sumrall said. “They responded, and we probably called some things a little differently to help them pin their ears back, but there was a different sense of urgency.”