The Top Five Recruits from Mike Gundy’s 2009 Oklahoma State Recruiting Class

Let’s continue our walk down memory lane today with a look back at Oklahoma State’s 2009 class, which included several home-grown kids for the Pokes. First, here’s a look back at the first four Mike Gundy recruiting classes.

2005
2006
2007
2008

Here are the top five players from the 2009 recruiting class.

1. Dexter Pratt — 4-star
2. Anthony Morgan — 4-star
3. Jeremy Smith — 4-star
4. Daytawion Lowe — 4-star
5. Brandon Webb — 3-star

Pratt had originally committed to LSU before flipping to Oklahoma State. I didn’t realize this, but his high school coach was Larry Fedora’s brother (!). He left the team after his freshman season, where he got into trouble along with Jamal Mosley for possessing weed. He played for Tyler JC for a bit, but it’s unclear where he ended up beyond that.

Morgan was a top-10 juco recruit and played a few years for OSU, even participating in OSU’s 2011 pro day (which was one of the first things I ever covered on PFB!). He proposed to his girlfriend using YouTube, which was apparently considered more novel in 2011 than it would be in 2020.

The other three guys were all good players for OSU. Never necessarily stars or superstars but legit players on a Big 12 title team in 2011. Lowe was probably the best of the three with 269 tackles in his career and five INT. He played in 50 games over the course of his career and — after a redshirt year in 2010 — helped anchor one of the great defenses in school history in 2013.

Smith ran for nearly 2,000 yards and 34 TDs in his career. He saved his best for the biggest games, too. A buck-forty and a pair of TDs against Texas in 2011. Another 119 yards and two more scores against OU in the Big 12 title-clincher in 2011. He was never at the Joe Randle-Chuba Hubbard level, but in terms of a No. 2 guy, he was as good as it gets.

They were also all three from Oklahoma. OSU snagged two of the top five and three of the top seven players from the state that year.

These weren’t the only players OSU landed from in state that year either. They also grabbed Clint Chelf, Tracy Moore and Michael Bowie. Charlie Moore and Levy Adcock — while not from Oklahoma — were also in the class of 2009.

In the end, this class ranked 34th nationally and fifth in a 12-team Big 12 that year. Those numbers are about on par with the entirety of the Gundy era. OSU didn’t hit on as many gems as normal though, certainly not as many as we saw in the last few classes. Moore and Moore were good, and Chelf became invaluable for stretches, but there were no massive stars here.

It wasn’t a lost class, but it wasn’t exactly a great one either. But that’s the thing with college football. You don’t have to hit every single year as long as you hit in most of them. Despite the lack of top-shelf talent here, a lot of these guys would still go on to play for two Big 12 titles against OU (and win one of them), and if they played five years like Chelf did (2009-13), they were part of 49 wins over the next half-decade in Stillwater.