NORMAN — It isn’t lost on Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables that the Maine Black Bears are looking for their fifth win against an FBS opponent in the Sooners this Saturday.

“I could brag on Maine,” said Venables, the Sooners’ third-year man, during Tuesday’s press conference. “They’ve got 17 graduate [seniors]. What does that mean? They’ve got a lot of experience.”

The Black Bears, who play in the FCS Colonial Athletic Association, will bring their 4-4 record over 1,900 miles to Memorial Stadium. Two weeks ago, they scored a 35-7 win over FCS No. 5 Villanova and beat No. 21 Albany 34-20 on Sept. 28. If ever there was a game featuring a vulnerable Sooners team hosting a scary FCS team that could be too close for comfort, this Saturday is ripe for that opportunity.

“There are schemes that we’ve got to get ready for, and we need to get them down quickly, and otherwise they get sloppy and it don’t look good,” Venables said. “That’ll show up, too, and if I said, ‘Hey fellas, we’re playing this opponent this week, we’ll see you on Thursday. Give you the first three days of the week off and we’ll start up on Thursday.’ How do you think that’s going to look? No matter who you play, that’s going to look like crap.”

Maine defeated Mississippi State 9-7 in 2004, its only SEC win in program history. That year’s Bulldogs went 2-6 in conference play with wins against No. 20 Florida and Kentucky on consecutive weeks. After this week, the Sooners will have three chances to win their second conference game in their inaugural SEC season: Nov. 9 at No. 25 Mizzou; Nov. 23 vs. No. 14 Alabama; and Nov. 30 at No. 16 LSU. 

“They’re a good FCS team,” freshman cornerback Eli Bowen said Monday night during player media availability. “They’ve beaten a lot of top teams in that division, so we can’t take them lightly and that’s shown by our record also.”

“That’s the last thing you want to do is kind of fall asleep on an opponent,” senior corner Dez Malone concurred. “This still is the game of football, and you’ve got to go out and compete and play your 1/11 and I think we’re treating them like we would treat anyone else on the schedule. And that’s the best thing we can do at this point.”

It also isn’t lost on this team — though it might be hard to imagine them winning another game after Saturday — that Maine is a must-win, fifth win to have a prayer of reaching the six-game bowl eligibility threshold and a must-dominate for further consideration. The Sooners hold the second longest active bowl streak in college football and have not missed bowl season since 1998.

“It’s actually pretty important to win this because we’re one more closer to getting to a bowl game,” junior defensive lineman R Mason Thomas said. “I know that’s huge because we have a bowl streak going back a long time. We’re not trying to look forward, but we know we have to win to make a bowl.”