Even in a down year, Oklahoma was good enough to almost win it all

With youth, inexperience, injuries, COVID and more, this OU team probably shouldn't have been in the championships at all, but still almost won their 13th title

Mark Williams / OU Athletics

The most successful coach on the Oklahoma campus finished second — and this time, Mark Williams seemed OK with it.

“Yeah,” Williams said Saturday night after the Sooners finished runner-up to Stanford, “I think we exceeded expectations.”

The expectations at OU — under Williams — are well established. He’s brought nine of the program’s 12 national championships. Second place is not his goal. But this year, for this team, second place was pretty remarkable.

Youth, inexperience, injuries, an ineligible athlete, an historic virtual meet against Army, followed by a month away from competition — this OU team probably shouldn’t have been in Minneapolis to begin with, much less in first place going into the final rotation.

“February was rough,” Williams said. “And, and we didn't rebound particularly well right away.”

Gage Dyer / OU Athletics

But they went undefeated (OU tied Stanford in their regular-season meet) and won their ninth straight Mountain Pacific Sports Federation conference championship (they did beat Stanford for that one) leading up to NCAA competition.

“To beat Stanford at the conference meet was really a surprise,” Williams said. “So I was like, we couldn't have done better. We hit 100 percent. Actually, guys did better at this (NCAA) meet than they did at conference.”

It goes to show where Williams has the program that the Sooners can finish second in the country in what could otherwise be considered an off year.

“I mean, the program is phenomenal,” said Gage Dyer, a senior from Yukon, OK, who won two individual national titles on Saturday. “Half the guys on this team have never been to an NCAA or even a conference championship. So being able to refine this really young team and get them into the program as quickly as we did, I mean, it's amazing. And it's going to give this young team a lot more ground, and material to build on next year.”

Dyer agreed with Williams that things looked sketchy back in February — and even before that.

“Yeah, I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out back in the fall semester,” he said, “because we were having some injuries. It was just hard to make the adjustments with COVID and whatnot, after being out of the gym for so many months and then coming back and, you know, expected to do that normal OU mentality training and whatnot. But I'm extremely thankful for all those hard days because it has refined us into a team that I am extremely proud of, in how far we've come this year.”

“For me,” said Williams, “being second is a win. You know, I really didn't think at the beginning of the season that looking at what Stanford had on paper — they're just very good. And for us to be contending right up to the last event is pretty amazing.”