THREE AND OUT
OU senior Austin Seibert is closing in on long-held goal
Shane O’Brien wasn’t about to let Austin Seibert know it then. But when he had Seibert write down the goals he wanted to work toward, O’Brien started questioning Seibert’s sanity a bit. It was in 2014, shortly after Seibert committed to Oklahoma when he scribbled three short, mid-term and longterm goals on a sheet of paper. The mid-term goals:
1. College scholarship
2.Lou Groza Award
3. All-time NCAA points leader
“I had several kids do it and a lot of it was manageable, normal goals, and then Austin wants to be the leading scorer all-time at Oklahoma,” O’Brien, who helped train Seibert, said this week.
“Part of my thought process was to scratch my head and wonder if this kid was crazy or to wonder if this kid was just absolutely special in every way.”
He quickly learned that it was the latter, even if Seibert had remembered the story as wanting to be OU’s all-time leading scorer and not the NCAA points leader. Sometime soon, barring something catastrophic, Seibert will accomplish the goal of becoming OU’s alltime leading scorer when he passes Michael Hunnicutt. Seibert enters Saturday’s
game at Texas Tech (7 p.m., ABC), 11 points behind Hunnicutt.
“That has been in the back of my head, I guess to feed the hunger to be hungry for something and leave my name here and have it on the record books is something that I’d really like to have,” Seibert said. “It’ll be a very special moment when it happens.”
He’s got an outside shot at fulfilling No. 3, as he’s 55 points behind Arizona State’s Zane Gonzalez for the NCAA record.
Last week, Seibert scored a career-high 15 points with three field goals and six extra points. His next extra point will also set an NCAA record for most made extra points and PAT attempts.
Seibert also accomplished the first of those three goals, starting at both place-kicker and punter as a freshman. Since his sophomore year, he’s also handled kickoff duties.
“To be able to do all three is, it’s rare,” Sooners coach Lincoln Riley said. “Somebody compared it the other day to being able to swing a golf club rightand left-handed. They’re so different and they’re different challenges and trying to improve at all three and be as good as he’s been in all three, it’s remarkable.”
Seibert met O’Brien when the two both worked out at Firehouse Gym in Belleville, Illinois, the St. Louis suburb that is Seibert’s home.
Eventually, O’Brien took over the gym from Jim Stiebel after Stiebel took a head coaching job elsewhere. O’Brien soon followed Stiebel to serve as an assistant coach before returning to the area several years later.
When he returned, O’Brien quickly started working with Seibert — and his younger brother Logan — again in a makeshift gym in his Columbia, Illinois, basement.
That’s where he had Seibert write down those goals.
“When I would train people, I would train them to the point that they puked, and that’s how I knew I was successful,” O’Brien said. “Neither one of those kids would ever puke. They would just keep going and going and going like the Energizer Bunny. It didn’t matter how hard I pushed them.”