Photo: Brian Bahr / Getty Images Sport / Getty Images
It took double overtime for the Oklahoma State Cowboys to defeat the Arkansas Razorbacks on Saturday. OSU topped Arkansas 39-31. The Cowboys will play Tulsa next Saturday, while Arkansas will take on UAB.
Here were comments from coaches and players after the game.....
Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy
Opening Statement:
“The only thing I can say statistically was we won the turnover margin and won the penalties, and then we were really good in overtime on both sides of the ball. We wasted the first half. Their coaches had better concepts and schemes than our coaches did. Our players got out of position, but for the most part, I thought, through the first quarter and a half, they had better concepts, did a better job of scheming than we did. At halftime, our coaches were fantastic with the adjustments we made. Players were really good about absorbing information, not panicking, not pointing fingers, taking it back out on the field and executing it and playing much better. We had like eight yards in the first quarter or something, so we started really slow, but I think they outcoached us in the first half."
On his team bouncing back in the second half and OT:
"I'm going to go with the culture we have here. I know everybody gets tired of hearing that, but our culture allows us to function in critical times. Times when most people panic, we don't panic. We take advantage of it and stay on the course. What does winning a game like this do for this team? We can get a lot of things out of it. One, there'll be a lot of good coaching on video. There's a lot of mistakes that we made. Coaches make mistakes, as I said earlier in the game, my job is to evaluate everything equal and they out coached us, certainly in the first quarter, but they can understand if they stay the course, don't panic, take information, make adjustments, then you can always figure out a way to win. Give yourself a chance."
On the false start call late in regulation:
"When we go on two and we clap and clap again, we motion the tight end to run the ball over there, and they jump. The explanation to me was that you can't do that, but we've done it before. So there's the issue you have with officiating crews. That’s an SEC crew. We did it, we've done it before, we did it all preseason in scrimmages with Big 12 crews and didn't get called. So, Steve Shaw is the head of officiating, he needs to fix it. He needs to get them all in one room, and everybody has the same rule. That's the way I see that."
On improving the run game:
"We got beat up pretty good in it, but we needed to get to the pass quicker. There's an extra guy there, and those are things we talked about. And, you know, once we started to expand the width of the field, we were able to throw for 326. If we had a better plan of attack based on what we saw earlier, we would throw for 450. It's percentages in my head on knowing what happened. We're not going to be able to get away with this much more. We're going to have to get better, we're going to have to get to 4.2 yards a carry… Whenever you have an issue, you’ve got to find out what it is, then you’ve got to have a plan to fix it. Then you’ve got to put that plan in place to fix it, then you’ve got to go execute. It's really that simple, and that's what we have to do this week."
Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman
Opening Statement:
“Congratulations to Oklahoma State, they found a way to win. We saw last year with BYU, BYU made a nice run on them in a half and in the third quarter and lost late. Obviously, we’re disappointed because the statistics were way in our favor. I thought our defense played three quarters of great football. They wore out a little bit offensively, we made too many mistakes, put the ball on the ground and threw a pick-six. Then we went through a spell there in the third quarter where we were moving the football, but the snap was either low or we couldn’t catch it, two or three times there that really stopped drives. We had a chance to go up 11, unfortunately we weren’t able to make the field goal. But Oklahoma State, they came back, and they beat us. We’ve got to take care of the ball. I liked the intensity that we played with. It came down to that we turned the ball over too many times, and we got beat. Congratulations to them. We’ve got a good football team, we’ve just got to correct these mistakes moving forward.”
On what he told the team after the game:
“Probably just about what I told you. We made too many mistakes, we played extremely hard. I was proud of our defense. That’s a good offensive team, and for three quarters, we held them to six points defensively. Talked about the turnovers, talked about that it’s one loss, it’s not an SEC loss. It’s one that we’ll learn from it, then we’ll flush it, and we’ll come back. I feel like we’ve got a really good football team, we just can’t win games turning the football over. I thought we did a good job on Ollie Gordon II, I thought he was as good as we thought he’d be. I thought we did a nice job there, and I thought for the most part, we did a good job of covering. I know they’re disappointed, but once we get home, we’ve got to bounce back from this one and head to the next one. It’s early in the year. I think we’ve proved that we have a good team. We’ve just got to hang on to the football, and we’ll win a lot of games.”
On what the locker room was like at halftime:
“I think we still played well defensively. Offensively we had pressure on the quarterback, we didn’t run the ball as well. The third quarter, they were putting a little bit more movement on us, a little bit more pressure on us to try to stop the run. Then, like I said, we had three or four snaps that were low, right back when I thought we were going to come back and punch. But I was pleased with how our defense played for three quarters. At halftime, to answer your question, we knew that they were going to make a rally, we knew they were. We talked about how they’ve done it in the past, they’re at home, they’re a veteran team. We’re going to have to go beat them. What happened is, we just shot ourselves in the foot a little bit. It seemed like there for 20 minutes in the third and fourth quarter, everything we did was just not right. Putting the ball on the ground, snaps, trick plays, muffed punt, missed field goal. It seemed like everything that could go wrong went wrong there in that span of time. I was really proud of the two-minute drive there at the end, and for (Kyle) Ramsey for kicking the field goal to get us into OT. That’s the first OT game we’ve lost since I’ve been here. I felt like once we get into OT, we were going to find a way to win, and we just didn’t.”
On the gameplan for Ollie Gordon II
“We were trying to make him run east-and-west and not north-and-south. A lot of our game and a lot of the things we were doing were to try and kick him outside. We knew that if he ever got his shoulders turned on us… He broke 13 tackles last week, and he probably broke a bunch today, too. But, that was our gameplan with him.”
On dealing with OSU’s aggressive defense:
“They had a total, in other words, they were all-zero, they were going to bring more than we could block with. We certainly prepared big-time for that. We missed a couple, we had (Isaiah) Sategna open on the post once that we missed, in that same situation. But the pressure got there a little bit faster than what we wanted it to. But we worked extremely hard, whether we were in 11-personnel, 12-personnel or in 20, where we didn’t have a tight end to use as a blocker. So we worked on several different situations. We knew they were going to do it, and we just didn’t execute quite as good as what we anticipated we were able to do. We practiced it. I felt like if they got into that, we could get them out of that pretty fast, and it was kind of the opposite. They got a sack on us early and continued to do that a little bit.”
Arkansas defensive lineman Cameron Ball
On the plan coming into the game...
"We knew that if we stopped the run that would make their offense scramble, but at the end of the day, it was only so much because we still lost."
On the thoughts in the locker room at halftime...
"We had a jump on them in the first half, and we went into halftime saying to ourselves that we have to finish this game out because we had a lot of games last year that we lost by either three or six points. It's in our mind that these games like this, we have to work more on closing out and finishing."
On what's next for Arkansas...
"Back to the drawing board on Monday, that's all we can do. Just focus on the mistakes, try to minimize them, look at what we did bad over better and go from there. Turn the page on Monday and start UAB prep."
Arkansas quarterback Taylen Green
On takeaways from this game...
"Our effort was extremely well. I'm proud of how everybody fought and the different situations we were put in. We have a lot to work on to cut out some mental mistakes, focusing on what our assignment is and to be consistent."
On his connection with wide receiver Andrew Armstrong...
"Our chemistry did not fall off and credit to him. He's been in the training room Monday through Sunday. Every single day he's been working, and he looks really good out there on the field. Extremely proud of him, for how he fought through dealing with the hamstring... I feel like our chemistry is second to none."
On handling the Cowboys’ consistent defensive pressure...
"It was tough. I have to do a better job getting the ball out... That's what we're going to work on, get to the drawing board and work in practice. It's not going to happen again."
Oklahoma State fullback Jake Schultz
On his big play…
“I mean, obviously that's a big play for me, but I'm just happy that we ended up with a win. You know, for me, it's more about the win than my play that I have. I'm not worried about that, you know. So that's kind of the mindset I've had.”
On if being so wide open made the catch more difficult…
“No, I just try to go blank. I've caught so many passes. I can catch that every time.”
On if he thought he was going to score on the play…
“I knew there would be someone chasing me. I tried, once I saw him in front of my eyes, to try to hit the burners, you know, but obviously he caught me.”
Oklahoma State defensive back Kale Smith
On his pick six…
“It was like a blessing. I never knew that balls were coming right there, and I just made a play.”
On the message from the coaches late in the game…
“Just to stay within myself and be me. Don’t try and do too much and just go out and try to make a play.”
On the last four plays of the game…
“I just remember thinking about how hard we were playing. It really felt like this group was playing super hard. We didn't give up, and we just knew we had to take the game.”
Oklahoma State linebacker Kendal Daniels
On the team’s reaction after Collin Oliver went down…
“We just thought to do it for Collin. I’m not sure how severe the injury is, but I’m going to check on him as soon as I can.”
On being injured on the last play…
“I went head-to-head with him. I mean, I just was hurting. I was like, it's the end of the game. I'm just gonna sit here for a little bit, just chill and just let my head stop ringing. But it was nice. It feels good now.”
On the defense standing tall despite giving up over 600 yards…
“We just go in tomorrow and look at what we messed up. 648, I mean, we did all that and still won the game. We did a good job getting the ball back for our offense in the second half, and that got us going.”
Oklahoma State running back Ollie Gordon
On his go-ahead touchdown and two-point conversion…
“I feel like it was just huge for the team. It's a momentum flipper. They had momentum the majority of the game. But Coach Gundy always puts us through different situations at practice. I feel like we were built for that.”
On his slow start and then grabbing the winning touchdown…
“It felt great, honestly. Not getting going early, that's not really good, but you have teammates, like I do, it's great for the team so you're good.”
On the team bouncing back after halftime…
“We’ve been playing together for a minute. It was just great for us to get in at halftime, talk to each other, talk to our coaches, fix what we can fix and then go out there and dominate the rest.”
Oklahoma State wide receiver Brennan Pressley
On the comeback win…
“I think it just says a lot. That's a great team, Arkansas. I think they're going to have a great season. But I think right now, it says a lot to the character of this team, just the way, you know, going down early like that, early on in the season, kind of you have to find out, like, alright, you know, who's who, or, like, what are we about? And stuff like that.”
On the fans…
“Shout out to the fans, to the crowd. I mean, they really gave us a lift. I mean, I remember looking up in overtime to someone and telling somebody I was like, it's still packed. Like nobody's left anything like that. So, shout out to them.”
On if he likes these OT thrillers…
“I mean, you guys watching probably think it's exciting, but I hate it, you know, you get the, we go up and then they come back down the field, and then, like, the play right before the field goal. When he throws, if he catches it and gets tackled, game’s probably over. So it's just a string of emotions like that. They miss the kick. We missed a kick. It was just so much that you kind of have to control yourself. And the coaches do a great job on the sideline of telling us, as much as you want to celebrate, you can’t get too high. You have to prepare for it though, so that way when we get out there, we're not shell shocked from the situation.”
Oklahoma State quarterback Alan Bowman
On throwing the ball 48 times in the game…
“You don't want to be in those situations a lot. I didn't look at how many times I threw it, but that's a lot. And look, if they are going to fill up the box try to stop Ollie, they're daring us to throw it. So we will.”
On capitalizing on Arkansas miscues…
“We had the one interception on our side, but we knew this young quarterback and that they would make mistakes. The fans were great today but just understanding being who we are, being us, and being able to capitalize on those mistakes. Probably should have scored touchdowns and had kicked field goals in the second half. But just capitalizing at least on some because we need every point.”
On his personal foul…
“You’d think, as an older guy, you know that could be composed, take care of himself, but I mean, you play in this game, it's so highly competitive, you get so fired up and you make a great play. And I just looked up and the sideline was just all staring at me, and I should’ve just turned around and celebrated with my teammates, but I had to give a little something. But, yeah, that could have potentially lost us the game. So I know it's all funny now, and it’s on Twitter and all that stuff. It's everywhere, but it'd be a completely different story if we lost.”
Oklahoma State linebacker Nick Martin
On the final play…
“We repped that play at practice a lot just, all the 13 personnel plays. We knew that we had to clear it up and just really play ball for one more down.”
On bouncing back from a slow first half…
“I think it's just staying close, knowing that everything is within and that we’ve just got to stick together, find a way. We’re a really close team. It's like a family. So can't thank my guys enough, just my team enough, just for how they just didn't give up, responded to the bad plays and responded to the success as well.”
On slowing down the Arkansas QB…
“I think we did a lot better in pass schemes in the second half and then we did a good job containing him from running.”
