There wasn’t much offense in this one, but the Oklahoma Sooners did just enough to hold off the Houston Cougars, for a 16-12 home victory Saturday night in front of 83,653 fans at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, in Norman.

The No. 15 Sooners (2-0) struggled to get their offense going, having to punt eight times in the game.

The bright spot for OU was quarterback Jackson Arnold who threw for two touchdowns. He completed 19-of-32 passes for 174 yards with one interception. Arnold also tried to spark the ground game and carried the ball 11 times for 40 yards. However, he was sacked three times in the game.

“A win is a win, no matter how ugly it was,” Arnold said, “and believe me it was ugly, but we’ll take it.”

In the first half, Arnold connected with receiver Brenen Thompson for a 10-yard touchdown pass and he threw to tight end Jake Roberts for an 11-yard touchdown strike to make the score 14-3, with 12:28 left in the second quarter. Houston’s Joseph Kim kicked a 43-yard field goal as time expired in the second quarter, and OU led 14-6 at the half.

OU head coach Brent Venables said his team didn’t play well but he was thrilled to come with a win.

“We did enough things wrong to deserve to lose,” Venables said. “We were fortunate to find a way to win. Overall, our body of work on offense was not very good today. I’m really proud of the guys that stepped up when they had an opportunity.”

A couple of those opportunities came late in the game when Robert Spears-Jennings intercepted a Donovan Smith pass to end a Houston drive and a late safety by Gracen Halton extend the Sooners lead from 14-12 to 16-12.

Although The Cougars (0-2) came out on the short end of the score, Houston racked up a total of 318 yards of offense, while OU managed only 249 total yards.

Houston quarterback Donovan Smith completed 24-of-28 passes for 260 yards and a touchdown with one interception. The one touchdown pass was to Joseph Manjack IV, and it came in the third quarter.

“I thought our guys played extremely hard, they were very competitive, from the beginning of the game to the end,” Houston coach Willie Fritz said. “That was a big step forward. When you’re playing the No. 15-ranked team in the country you’ve got to play smart though, too, and we made some mistakes at critical points of the game.”

OU punter Luke Elzinga got a workout in this one, but successfully dropped two of his eight punts inside the 5-yard line and three inside the 10-yard line. Although OU struggled to convert on third-down situations, they didn’t hand Houston easy field positions.

“That was a big part of the game in a field position game,” Venables said.

The Sooners will now host Tulane on Saturday at 2:30 p.m.