For all of his press conference antics and kids-these-days grousing, Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy keeps one of the most even keels you’ll ever see on the sideline. He projects stoicism. It ... has not rubbed off on his team in 2018.
Oklahoma State’s roller coaster 2018 gets even wilder with an upset of WVU
The Pokes are suffering through their first losing Big 12 season in four years. They’ve also beaten two top-15 teams and damn near beat a third.
Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images
Thus far in 2018, Gundy’s 14th Cowboy team has come up big in big games.
- Boise State was dominant early in the season but got run through a wheat thresher on a mid-September trip to Stillwater.
- Texas was up to sixth in the AP rankings when OSU raced to a 24-7 lead and held on, 38-35.
- Oklahoma was sixth when OSU visited Norman last Saturday and needed a two-point conversion stop to survive, 48-47.
- And on Saturday night in Stillwater, No. 9 West Virginia bolted to a 31-14 halftime lead but gave up 31 second-half points and two touchdowns in the final five minutes, to fall, 45-41.
That’s one hell of a résumé, one befitting a program that has won double-digit games in six of the last nine seasons.
Oh yeah, and Oklahoma State has also:
- lost by 24 at Texas Tech;
- lost at home to Iowa State;
- lost by 19 at the worst Kansas State team in the two decades;
- blown a late lead and lost at Baylor, 35-31.
The Cowboys had a lot of blood to replace from 2017 — quarterback Mason Rudolph, receivers James Washington and Marcell Ateman, two all-conference offensive linemen, both starting safeties, defensive coordinator Glenn Spencer. It was fair to assume they would labor through an up-and-down campaign. But this is pretty impressive.
Both OSU teams were on display on Saturday evening. WVU out-gained the Pokes by 121 yards in the first half; OSU was 1-for-6 on third downs and turned the ball over twice. They were lucky to be down only 17, having forced a field goal and made a fourth-and-short red zone stop in the second quarter.
In the second half, they both simplified things and relaxed.
OSU cut the lead to 31-24 heading into the fourth quarter, then surged ahead during a nutty, back-and-forth final stanza that featured 400 combined yards. WVU twice extended its lead back to 10 and led 41-31 on Will Grier’s gorgeous, Texas-themed fourth-down QB sneak. But OSU’s Taylor Cornelius responded with a TD run of his own, and after a Mountaineer punt — WVU nearly went for it on fourth-and-6 from midfield with 2:45 left but committed a false start — Cornelius and running back Chuba Hubbard combined to rush four times for 74 yards. With 42 seconds left, Cornelius’ first completion of the drive went for a touchdown to Tylan Wallace.
WVU managed to quickly drive to the OSU 14 with two seconds left, but Will Grier’s final pass was broken up by A.J. Green.
Because of their upside, OSU was a healthy 27th in S&P+ heading into Saturday’s game despite losses to the No. 91 (BU) and 96 (KSU) teams. But they also hadn’t clinched a bowl bid until Green’s breakup.
This won’t go down as one of Gundy’s greatest seasons in Stillwater. But it’s certainly been memorable in its own way. And after knocking Texas a game back in the Big 12 race with an upset a few weeks ago, the Cowboys put the Longhorns right back in the driver’s seat with a second upset.
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