‘This Is the Most Talented Team We’re Gonna Play’: Tulsa Coach Tre Lamb Discusses Prepping for Oklahoma State

Tre Lamb got his Tulsa tenure started off on the right foot last season when he led the Golden Hurricane to its first win in Stillwater since the 1950s.

But the second Oklahoma State team Lamb faces doesn’t have many similarities to the first. Oklahoma State and Tulsa open their seasons against each other on Sept. 5 when the Cowboys travel across the turnpike to the 918.

Entering his second season, Lamb met with reporters Thursday and was rather complimentary of what new OSU coach Eric Morris has built in a short time.

“This is the most talented team we’re gonna play… This is the Big 12. It’s a different world.”@CoachTreLamb9

“We’ve got 10 days to get it fixed.” pic.twitter.com/lHfc50wJKH

— Jeremie Poplin (@jeremiepoplin) August 27, 2026

“This is the most talented team we’re gonna play,” Lamb said. “That’s just what I told the guys. I do feel that way. I think they have a first-round quarterback. I think Coach Morris is a really good evaluator of talent, him and his staff, Raj (Murti), their GM. They’ve done an unreal job of bringing good players in, and we know what’s in front of us.”

Lamb and Morris shared the American Conference last season, but the two teams didn’t meet. Morris, Mestemaker and the rest of the Mean Green went 7-1 in the league while Tulsa finished 1-7 in conference games, beating only Army.

By the sounds of it, Tulsa didn’t have the greatest of practices before Lamb’s media availability, with Tulsa’s coach harping on the importance of the Golden Hurricane minimizing mistakes, especially against a team of OSU’s caliber.

“Like I told the team, you can’t do discipline mistakes and overcome them when you’re playing good people,” Lamb said. “This is not an American Conference game, this is the Big 12. It’s a different world. One false step, one jump offsides, one penalty on special teams, one missed motion by the quarterback, and you’re gonna have issues. You’re gonna be looking at a 14-point swing with one mistake.

“It’s certainly a challenge. I’m trying to challenge our team to continue to learn and grow from those mistakes. I didn’t like how we started practice with four real issues out of the gate. Some special teams errors, we were sloppy there. Quarterback missed a motion. We jumped offsides. We jumped an under route. You jump an under route against Mestemaker, and it’s gonna be seven points. It’s a lot to coach off of. It’s a lot to learn from. We’ve got 10 days to get it fixed.”

FanDuel currently has OSU as 14.5-point favorites. It sounds as if Lamb is well aware Tulsa will be an underdog on opening day, as he talked about the importance of keeping the ball away from the OSU offense.

“We gotta go for it some on fourth down to keep the ball away from 17 (Mestemaker),” Lamb said. “And you’re gonna have to play the game that way. We have to sustain drives on offense to project our defense, and when we do get out there on defense, we gotta make sure we’re not giving up easy big plays and stopping (Caleb) Hawkins.

“They don’t have many weaknesses. The more you watch them, the better they get. It’s certainly gonna be a challenge.”