STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) -Just how big was Oklahoma State’s season-opening win against Georgia?
Billionaire donor T. Boone Pickens, age 81, did a dance in the locker room. Coach Mike Gundy got inundated by text messages and had trouble finding a place to eat in town that wasn’t overcrowded as the celebration spread into a second day in Stillwater.
“All those things work to your favor,” Gundy said Monday. “But then you’ve got to let it go.”
The Cowboys headed back to work Monday with the task of building on the school’s first season-opening win against a Top 25 opponent in Stillwater.
Priority No. 1: tuning up the high-powered offense that sputtered to victory against No. 13 Georgia on Saturday.
urn to score 17 of their 24 points in the 24-10 win against Georgia.
“I thought we did enough to win the game. We made some explosive plays and did some good things, but I don’t think anybody in our offensive room was pleased by the way that we played because we knew our potential,” Brewer said. “The bar has been raised where we expect to go out and score points, move the ball and really do what we need to do.”
Quarterback Zac Robinson, Big 12 rushing leader Kendall Hunter and Biletnikoff Award finalist Dez Bryant all returned from the offense that averaged 487.7 yards and 40.8 points last season. But after Game 1, Brewer said he’d be looking for better effort and execution this Saturday to keep up when Houston rolls into town.
The Cougars ranked second in total offense at 562.8 yards per game and 10th in scoring with 40.6 points last season, then threw for 447 yards in a 55-7 win against Northwestern State.
“After seeing the tape and seeing what we expect of them, they are very down-to-earth right now and willing to work a little harder to understand that we’re fortunate as an offense to have a defense and special teams saved our bacon a little bit,” Brewer said. “We didn’t play the way we expect them to play, and they didn’t play the way they wanted to play.”
Gundy said he thought the Cowboys were “sloppy on offense in a lot of areas.”
hem free yards. We didn’t block particularly well. We turned some guys loose on the quarterback,” Gundy said. “But we had skill players that stepped up and made plays. They’re all mistakes that can be corrected, and as a coaching staff we have to do a better job.”
The start bears some resemblance to last season, when OSU struggled on offense in a 39-13 win in its opener against Washington State. Oklahoma State’s defense limited those Cougars to a mere 196 yards while its own offense was held to a season-low 367.
In Week 2 against Houston, the Cowboys’ offense took off with 699 yards – the second-most in school history – while the defense allowed 483.
“We’re not going to let anyone down. We’re going to play and we’re going to keep getting better and better,” said defensive tackle Shane Jarka, who forced a key fourth-quarter fumble against Georgia. “It’s up to our defense now to step up to the level that we played at last week and continue to get better.”
While Gundy praised Oklahoma State’s defense for leading the way in Week 1, he also cautioned that no one should believe that the results of a single game mean new defensive coordinator Bill Young’s job of improving the OSU defense is done.
“I know that he had a lot invested in this because he’s the new guy on the block, and we haven’t played very well on defense here in a long time,” Gundy said. “So when you bring a new guy in, all of a sudden people think, `Wow, you’re going to fix all the problems instantly.’ I think that he’s corrected some mistakes and I think that he’s pulled the players together and they’re playing better.
“But we have a long way to go. It’s a long season.”
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