By Will Vandervort.

When Brent Venables first started to hear his Clemson defense was going to match up against his old employer in Oklahoma, he did not think about the fact he had to go up against his mentor and friend in head coach Bob Stoops, he was just glad he was not facing a Johnny Manziel led Texas A&M or Baylor-like team.

In 2012, when Clemson was already penciled in to appear in the Chick-fil-A Bowl, there was a 48-hour period when the Tigers thought they might be playing Texas A&M and Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Johnny Manziel.

“I thought, Oh my gosh! We are going to play Johnny Manziel and that crew.’ At the time we were little bit thin in the secondary and that would have been a tough matchup,” Venables said.

Clemson ended up playing LSU instead and Venables’ defense had one of its best games that year in limiting those Tigers to 99 rushing yards and 318 total yards.

Last year, the Tigers spent a better part of the day on Selection Sunday thinking they could possibly play Baylor in the Orange Bowl. Art Briles’ record-setting offense leads the country in total (581.3 yds/gm) and scoring offense (48.8).

“I think they broke more scoreboards than us a year ago,” Venables said. “That was a dose of ‘awe geeze.’ I had a dose of that Baylor loss my last year at Oklahoma and Robert Griffin was the quarterback.”

But don’t think Venables for one second thinks defending Oklahoma is going to be an easy task. He understands better than anyone how good the Sooners are on offense, especially with all three of their main weapons expected to play in quarterback Trevor Knight, running back Samaje Perine and wide receiver Sterling Shepard.

Knight had missed the last three games with what appeared to be a neck injury, while Shepard has missed the last four games with a groin injury. Perine rolled his ankle in the season-finale against Oklahoma State, but team doctors have cleared him to play in the Russell Athletic Bowl on Dec. 29.

“It’s about Oklahoma. What do they do? What do they do well? How do you take it away? What are the matchups? What do we have to do to get our guys ready to play,” Venables said.

What the Tigers (9-3) have to do is take away the Sooners’ running game, which seems to be an interesting matchup to watch. Clemson’s defense leads the country in total defense and ranks seventh in rushing defense. Oklahoma ranks ninth nationally at running the football and Perine is averaging 131.6 yards a game by himself.

“I’m excited for the bowl game knowing our guys will be prepared,” Venables said. “They will be very excited. They will have great respect for Oklahoma. They are really good at what they do. They have had incredible success.

“They stubbed their toe a little bit this year but we can certainly relate to that. They have not caught some breaks and have had some injuries and lost a couple of real tight games exactly like we have.”

And though he is excited about the challenge of facing an offense like Oklahoma, for obvious reasons and his relationships with the Sooners, this is the last team he wanted to play in the Russell Athletic Bowl.

“It might be like last choice A, last choice B, last choice C. I like to take the weakest guy and just dominate him,” Venables said jokingly. “I’m not making any apologies. I’m not like oh, ‘I want the best team with all their best players,’ and okay that is satisfying too, I’ll take that. But I rather eat hot dogs, drink a Coke and beat somebody while letting one of our (graduate assistants) call the game.”