STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) -The highs and lows of college football come as no surprise to Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy.
One week, his Cowboys were the toast of the town and well beyond after an impressive season-opening victory against Georgia that ranked among the best in the program’s history.
The next, he’s answering questions about a deflating upset at the hands of Houston that dropped his team 11 spots to No. 16 in The Associated Press’ latest poll.
“It’s just life. You’re put up on a pedestal for several months and people (are) telling you how good you are. And then you beat Georgia and you get all the national publicity, and around town everybody’s patting you on the back,” Gundy said Sunday.
“And then all of a sudden you lose a game that people think you should have won. In our profession, that’s what happens.”
all but unforced and 513 yards allowed by a defense that had shown signs of improvement.
“When we’ve built the program to the level we’re at now, people expect us to win every game we play for the most part. So, that’s good,” Gundy said. “But … there’s not going to be many teams win 14 games, and there’s not going to be many win 13 or 12 or 11 or 10.
“We’re going to try to win every game we play.”
The Cowboys had a stretch of brilliance when they outscored Houston 21-0 in the third quarter. The defense stifled elusive quarterback Case Keenum on back-to-back drives and Dez Bryant had an electrifying 82-yard punt return for a score between
Beyond that, the Cowboys didn’t play up to expectations. The offense that ranked sixth in the nation last year got off to a slow start for a second straight game, and Oklahoma State found itself playing from behind.
After OSU took the lead, the wheels fell off. Quarterback Zac Robinson dropped a shotgun snap that Houston’s David Hunter recovered, then threw an interception that Bryant tipped into the air. Bryant claimed after the game that he cramped up on the play, but Gundy said Sunday that the Cowboys simply didn’t execute the play.
as deflected at the line.
The defense missed more than its fair share of tackles against Houston’s speedy receivers and back. And all three phases of OSU’s team contributed penalties at critical times.
“If we put everything into it and we give effort and we come up short, then we come up short. We don’t ever accept losing, but we can’t just shut it down and quit,” Gundy said Sunday. “Now what we need to do is correct mistakes.
“We’ve got to eliminate turnovers and play more sound in defense and eliminate penalties.”
Gundy, who generally focuses on the offense during the game, said he hadn’t yet reviewed defensive tape on Sunday but the one assessment he offered was that “part of the defensive issue is us not playing very well in the first quarter on offense.”
In both of their games, the Cowboys have allowed their opponents to score a touchdown on their opening drive and then failed to respond immediately. On Saturday, OSU was down 24-7 at halftime before the offense finally came alive.
“We started off really slow again. We’ve got to quit doing that,” offensive lineman Brady Bond said. “We were down 17 points at halftime and we were calm. We knew we could have a chance to come back. We’re just putting ourselves in too big of holes, making too many mistakes offensively.”
ure to attack Houston’s skill players so that they’d be forced into crowds of OSU defenders. Too many times, the Cougars were able to turn short screen passes and dump-offs into big gains.
“You get guys that are that athletic and get in the open field, it’s hard to pen them in,” Young said.
The problem for OSU is that most Big 12 offenses will resemble Houston’s spread – think Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Missouri – much more than the plodding approach Georgia featured in its 24-10 loss in Stillwater.
Oklahoma State also isn’t sure whether it will have tailback Kendall Hunter, the Big 12’s leading rusher last season with 1,555 yards, back for this week’s game against Rice (0-2) after he was hurt against Houston.
Gundy said he thought the injury was “somewhat significant – I don’t know if it’s a week, two weeks or a month – just because he didn’t come back in the game.”
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