David Overstreet will tell you it was criminal how Missouri played against Oklahoma on Saturday.

The Tigers dropped a pass that would have been a touchdown and given them a 10-0 lead on their home field.

They had a punt blocked for a safety.

They committed a personal-foul, roughing-the-punter penalty that allowed OU to keep possession and drive for a touchdown.

They couldn’t score from first-and-goal at the 2-yard line.

They allowed 231 yards rushing, including 162 to a backup tailback.

And yet, as let down as he was by Mizzou’s bumbling 26-10 loss, the senior free safety spoke in a tone that would have you believe he and his teammates feel like they’ve been given community service rather than jail time.

Like they will make the most of their second chance at getting a handle on first place in the Big 12 Conference North Division.

“I’m telling you, if you could come out to practice with us on Tuesday, you’ll see,” Overstreet said when someone questioned Mizzou’s ability to put Saturday’s outcome behind it. “It’ll be like it’s the first game of the season all over again, because nothing else matters except for the game we’ve got coming up.”

That game at Nebraska on Saturday is one Missouri likely would have needed to win anyway for a division crown, regardless of what happened to the Tigers last week. Since the Huskers also lost last week, the teams will enter tied for first place in the league, which only raises the stakes of the outcome.

The winner Saturday will have a one-game lead with two to play. Because the winner would hold the tiebreaker, it would have to lose its final two contests to be denied a spot in the conference championship.

No wonder Overstreet is confident there’s no danger of an Oklahoma hangover.

“Just about everybody on this team — man, we don’t let anything from the outside get us,” he said “When you have guys like that, it’s a lot easier to come out and focus at practice.”

Surprisingly, that might not have been the case in Columbia, Mo., last week.

Although Mizzou had lost 15 of its last 16 games with the Sooners, it was riding an eight-game winning streak at Faurot Field and acted, unwisely, as though No. 9 would be automatic.

“We’ve been saying we try to go one game at a time, and I think that a lot of us didn’t do that — me in particular,” said tight end Chase Coffman, who dropped the pass that would have given the Tigers an early two-possession lead and also was the target on a fourth-and-goal lob from the OU 1 that was batted away. “I just don’t think we were as well prepared, maybe, as we should’ve been.”

Come again, Chase? Are you saying the Tigers were looking past Oklahoma and ahead to this week?

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Coffman said.

Tight end Martin Rucker didn’t have that feeling, and offered the Sooners deserved more credit than some wanted to give them.

“Oklahoma’s a good football team, and everybody knew that. We knew that,” Rucker said. “It wasn’t like we didn’t prepare any harder or as hard as we have in the past. We just shot ourselves in the foot.”

While those wounds heal, Missouri would do well to become more effective in the running game — its ability to do it and stop it.

Oklahoma held the Tigers to 76 yards rushing. After Tony Temple fumbled and dislocated his left shoulder on the third series, Mizzou gave the ball to its tailback (Earl Goldsmith) just three more times in the first half for a net gain of 2 yards. In the final two quarters, the Tigers exclusively ran no-back sets in which quarterback Chase Daniel either ran or passed every play. Daniel finished with 20 rushes, but 10 were scrambles. And he gained 25 of the team’s rushing yardage after the score was 26-10 and the Sooners pulled back on their pressure.

“If we were down in the dumps and we’d lost three, four in a row, then I think it’d be pretty hard,” Daniel said of moving beyond the poor performance. “But motivation is going into Lincoln. There wasn’t a lull after the A&M game, and I guarantee there won’t be one now.”

Missouri followed its 26-21 loss at to Texas A&M on Oct. 14 by beating Kansas State for the first time in 14 years. And just like they did before that game against the Wildcats, the Tigers will focus more on their personnel this week.

“It’s not going to be about Nebraska,” coach Gary Pinkel said. “It’s not, ‘We’re going to play a good football team,’ as we did (Saturday). It’s, more or less, how we play, and we’ve just got to make sure that we try to correct these problems.”

For as criminally as they played against Oklahoma, the Tigers are grateful for their week of community service to try and work things out.

“I mean, we have a group of guys that it doesn’t matter when we’re playing, who we’re playing, where we’re playing,” Overstreet said. “We come back and give it everything, so this does not crush our confidence. Not one bit.”

Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.