Written by James Crepea at AL.com
No. 7 Oklahoma defeated No. 14 Auburn 35-19 in the Sugar Bowl on Monday night in New Orleans.
Below is what Sooners coach Bob Stoops, quarterback Baker Mayfield, running back Samaje Perine and linebacker Jordan Evans said at the postgame press conference.
COACH STOOPS: My compliments to the entire Sugar Bowl committee, the people in New Orleans at the hotel, the practice site here at the Superdome and on and on. It’s just been an incredible week. And everybody has just been fantastic.
Compliments to Auburn, Coach Malzahn and his team having an excellent year. Very good football team and played a good game tonight. Can’t say enough how proud I am of my players, the way they handled theirselves not only this entire week but the whole month leading up to the game. They have been at a ton of meetings, and they have practiced hard and took care of themselves around New Orleans here this entire week. Not one guy was late to a meeting or anything else.
So they really invested in it, and it showed tonight. Really proud of the way they played in all parts of the game. I thought we were tough, physical. Both sides of the ball executed well, compliments to the assistant coaches who put together an excellent game plan and to these guys up here and the job they did.
I want to recognize Samaje (Perine). He doesn’t want me to do it. But to be the all-time leading time rusher at a place like Oklahoma, when you look at the lineage of running backs that we have had through the decades, to be the all-time leading rusher is really something special. So the entire team took a lot of pride in that.
Q. The first two drives of the game the offense couldn’t get anything on. But from there on it seemed like you were pretty much unstoppable. What changed after that first quarter?
COACH STOOPS: Really just execution. Same thing defensively. The execution early. I think the pace of the play and the different formations they gave us, just got us — even though we prepared for them, we were not ready to respond quick enough. And then we settled down and did. The same thing offensively. Once we settled down and recognized what they were doing, we handled it really well.
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