Cowboys Come Crashing Back to Reality

One day following Oklahoma State's back-to-reality loss to Houston, head coach Mike Gundy was a bit reflective Sunday on what his team has been through and what remains ahead.

The Oklahoma State Cowboys had been the media darlings of the offseason, making Sports Illustrated covers, starting the year in almost everyone's Top 10 preseason poll, and then last week they seemed to make good on all of the expectations with a convincing season-opening win over Georgia.

Maybe just winning the Big 12 was too modest. "What about a national title?" some might have thought as OSU ascended to Top 5 of the AP poll this week.

But for all of the buzz that was generated, it all disappeared in an instant when unranked University of Houston, of Conference USA acclaim, came into Boone Pickens Stadium on Saturday and lowered all the expectations on the Cowboys courtesy of their 45-35 win.

So now we know the Cowboys aren't nearly as good as originally thought.

"I think it's just life," said Gundy, whose lofty ranking plummeted to No.16 in the latest AP poll released Sunday. "We had been on a pedestal for several months, people telling you how good you are and you beat Georgia, the national publicity and then around town everybody is patting you on the back and then all of sudden you lose a game people think you should have won.

"In our profession that's what happens and the only way to handle it is to keep your head up, come back, correct your mistakes and try to make your team better and get ready to play next Saturday."

In doing so, the Cowboys now have a lot more on film they need to get corrected before Rice pays a visit Saturday. The biggest thing is figuring out how to get an offense that is supposed to be one of the most explosive in the country out of the gates faster. That could be difficult with the status of running back Kendall Hunter unknown after he left Saturday's game in the second quarter with an apparent right ankle injury and did not return. OSU must also clean up four ugly turnovers after not committing any a week earlier against the Bulldogs. Star quarterback Zac Robinson committed two critical turnovers late in the game, including a pick six, with the Cowboys fighting to reclaim the lead.

But potentially bigger is fixing the fragile psyche of a defense that seemed to turn a major corner in defensive coordinator Bill Young's debut against Georgia. Now we speculate that the Bulldogs were just way too deliberate and vanilla in their approach, which made it easy for Young and his experience to solve. The Cougars moved the ball in ways and at a pace very similar to what OSU will see in Big 12 play shortly.


UH put up 512 yards of offense with quarterback Case Keenum completing 32 of 46 passes for 366 yards, three touchdowns and one interception.

Interestingly, Gundy had little to say about the defense during Sunday's teleconference. While he normally looks at the film and meets with the defensive coaches before talking with the media, he hadn't brought himself to make it to that end of the building yet.

"Part of the defensive issue was us not playing very well in the first quarter on offense," Gundy said.

As for bouncing back from such a deflating loss, Gundy admits it will be difficult though it can be done. Any thoughts of a national championship have disappeared, but with Oklahoma and Texas maybe not as mighty as initially thought, either, the Big 12 championship remains a realistic goal.

But Gundy placed the onus on his players to regroup after Saturday's loss.

"It's hard to gauge those circumstances," he said. "The team will be over here tomorrow but it's their responsibility, the seniors and the guys who played, to gather the team up and to practice and prepare. As coaches we can feed them information and we can give them pep talks and whatever it may be but it's their responsibility to come together and play each Saturday.

"When we've built a program to the level we are at now, people expect us to win every game we play for the most part, so that's good. But I said this before the season started, there are not going to be many teams that win 14 games and there are not many that going to win 13, 12, 11 or 10.

"We are going to try win every game we play, we are going to try to work hard and prepare. If we put everything into it and we give effort and we come up short then we come up short," Gundy continued. "We don't ever accept losing but we can't just shut it down and quit. What we need to do is correct mistakes. We have to eliminate turnovers and play more sound on defense -- eliminating penalties or do a better job to minimize penalties and go from there. That's where we need to start and that has to start tomorrow."

As for Hunter, Gundy said he had not been apprised as of yet on the status of last season's Big 12 rushing leader. But he did offer a hint of concern for the prognosis.

"I would think his injury is somewhat significant," Gundy said. "I don't know if it's a week, two weeks or a month. Just because he didn't come back into the game, in most cases when a player doesn't come back into the game that means it's not going to be just a two- or three-day injury. But I can't say that until I meet with the medical people later on tonight."