Yahoo - Charlie Strong says his Texas team needs to learn how to win (Dr. Saturday)

[Jenni Carlson]

Before the season began, Texas coach Charlie Strong startled some fans when he said his team wasn't going to win a national championship. He's turned out to be true. At 2-3, even if Texas runs the table and wins every game the rest of the season, the Longhons won't be in the College Football Playoff. But before talk can begin about Texas winning multiple games, the Longhorns first have to get back to .500 and start building confidence. And Strong said Monday after his team's 28-7 loss to Baylor that his team is still learning how to win. "Well, you look at the team, and I just know that [we would] like to be better than what we are," Strong said. "This is a team right now that's lacking confidence. It's lacking confidence where you go and finish the game.* It's confidence to believe. As I said on Saturday, we've got to learn how to win." ********* "When you learn how to win the games and you walk into a game you're going to feel different about it.* Like, hey, we can go win this football game, so it's a continual building process.* When you have success early and you're dealing with a young team, then you've just got to continue to build on it because defensively you should play good on defense because the number of starters that you have coming back.* And that's what's happening right now." However, Texas hasn't had much success early. Its wins are over North Texas and Kansas, teams that have a combined four wins over SMU, Nicholls State, Southeast Missouri State and Central Michigan. Strong said his seniors were becoming more vocal and named RB Malcolm Brown, who didn't lose much in high school. In his three-plus seasons at Texas, the Longhorns have lost 17 games. Saturday's game for Texas is the Red River Rivalry against Oklahoma, a team that was upset last week by TCU. "I told them as of right now, I did not feel like we were there yet," Brown said via Orangebloods.com . "High school football doesn't really compare a whole, whole lot to college football. I said I really felt that in high school, we never went into a game thinking we were going to lose. I can't even tell you any game we went in and I wasn't like, 'we're about to smash this team.' I told the team last week or two weeks ago I don't feel like that (about this) team, and that was something we needed to get is that type of confidence." Last year, Texas beat Oklahoma. A Texas football program lacking for confidence is striking and it's especially noteworthy when the next game is against a rival who the Longhorns pasted the year before. A win this season against the Sooners could produce a ton of confidence. But Texas knows that its offense will have to produce to have any shot of winning on Saturday. As we saw in 2013, you never truly know with a rivalry game. But as unlikely as last year's win looked, a Texas win looks even more unlikely, especially as the team admittedly struggles with its self-esteem. Against Baylor, QB Tyrone Swoopes had his worst game since he took over for David Ash. Texas could have broken into double figures, but Swoopes fumbled a snap on fourth-and-goal from the one. He'll have to rebound proficiently against an Oklahoma defense that gave up 496 yards of offense to TCU. "We know we can play a good brand of football," Quandre Diggs said. "We've been doing that all year. So it's not just defensively, though. We've got to continue to just help those guys on offense and continue to be the big brother out there and just don't point any fingers, just go out and help those guys get better each and every week. I think that's one thing that we have to do as a defense, continue to just help those guys and continue to just be there for them when they need our help." - - - - - - - Nick Bromberg is the assistant editor of Dr. Saturday on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @NickBromberg

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