New-Look Cowboys Prove Themselves on the Road

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MORGANTOWN, West Virginia — The contingent of players that made the journey up I-35 from North Texas to Oklahoma State this offseason have played a lot of good football, but they did something Saturday night that they didn’t necessarily have to do a ton of in Denton — play in an overly hostile environment.

Oklahoma State beat West Virginia 41-24 on Saturday night in front of a crowd of 57,756 at Milan Puskar Stadium. The biggest road crowd North Texas faced last season was less than half of that — 28,446 at Army.

“Most hostile, for sure,” OSU quarterback Drew Mestemaker said. “Whenever you win in a game like that and whenever you make those big plays and everything goes quiet, it feels good running down the field. That was definitely the best away game environment I’ve ever played in.”

Mestemaker made plenty of crowd-silencing plays, with 10 passing plays of at least 20 yards, including four of at least 40 yards.

I’m not sure anyone enjoyed playing in enemy territory more than the guy who was on the end of a lot of those big plays: Wyatt Young.

Young had eight catches for 192 yards and a touchdown, and he wasn’t afraid to let defensive backs or fans know just how well he was playing.

“I love away games,” Young said. “Don’t get me wrong, I love playing at Boone Pickens, of course. There’s no other stadium like it, but playing in a road, hostile environment definitely gets the juices flowing, for sure.”

The Cowboys have played in front of loud crowds in Boone Pickens Stadium in recent weeks, but it’s been loud when the OSU defense was on the field. It was flipped in Morgantown.

Rather than trying to juice up a crowd, Ethan Wesloski made 17 tackles in front of a fanbase trying to will its offense forward.

Winning this game was obviously a big step for the program at large, but it was also a big feather in the cap of a group of guys who hadn’t necessarily been tested in a Power Conference road environment.

“It was awesome,” Wesloski said. “I think I was telling (Harrison) Dempsey on the sideline, I said, ‘Man, this is probably my favorite away game so far.’ The energy there, we knew it was gonna be a loud environment, we knew it was gonna be awesome, so to go in there and to take someone’s will, take someone’s soul was awesome for us. Gives us a lot of confidence going to Week 2 of conference.”