Daily Bullets (July 12): Gundy’s Wall Street Hiring Practices, Holliday Fills His Opening

Oklahoma may be Sooners/Cowboys split over the Westbrook trade last night – I’m pro-asset gathering. Happy Friday y’all.

Bullets Rundown

• Gundy’s unique hiring practices
• Holliday fills his opening
• The real (big) OSU

OSU Bullets

• I love it when teams/programs I follow make contrarian moves to find a competitive advantage. We’ll soon see how this works out for Mike Gundy with his recent hiring practices.

Both of Mike Gundy’s coordinators are Ivy men. Gleeson, hired in January as offensive coordinator, spent the last six seasons on the Princeton staff. Knowles, hired a year ago as defensive coordinator, played at Cornell and coached there 15 seasons, including six as head coach.

“Stillwater is becoming the Harvard of the West, right?” Knowles cracked. “We joke about that.” [NewsOK]

I’m optimistic about half of this equation currently and I’m completely for the other (defensive) half working out – I’m just looking for some indicators to tell me it’s headed in that direction.

• It’s been circulating for a while but Josh Holliday has brought back one of his original assistants to replace the recently departed James Vilade.

After leaving Stillwater and taking over the program at Washington State, (Marty) Lees coached eight All-Pac-12 honorees and 13 players who were selected in the Major League Baseball Draft, and he guided the 2018 Cougars to the second-best fielding percentage in school history (.977).

Lees’ collegiate coaching career began and blossomed at Oregon State, where he spent 11 seasons on the Beavers’ staff under head coach Pat Casey, including serving as the associate head coach from 2009-12. [NewsOK]

• Bob Allen went to Columbus and broke down the two OSUs.

Oklahoma State does have more NCAA national championships than the Buckeyes. The Cowboys have won 52 NCAA team national championships to the Buckeyes 29. Oddly enough, in a sport that is not NCAA accredited, equestrian, both school compete and Ohio State has eight national championships to Oklahoma State’s six.

Ohio State has won their championships in 11 different sports, while Oklahoma State has won theirs in just five sports. [GoPokes]

More shocking to me were the recent enrollment statistics comparing the OSUs:

Here are more relevant numbers as Ohio State has an enrollment (2017) of 66,444 and Oklahoma State has an enrollment (2018) of 25,594. [GoPokes]

I’ve heard from local businesses that freshman classes have been decreasing a bit in Stillwater – safe to say OSU won’t be catching the Buckeyes soon.

• A Texas regent saying Nick Saban was interested in the Texas job at one time is one of the most UT things I’ve heard

• The Boone twins are getting prepared for the jump to D1 basketball

Non-OSU Bullets (Mostly Westbrook Trade Talk)

• Bill Haisten eulogized the Russell Westbrook era well before last night’s trade broke

• I’m confused about the Westbrook trade from the Houston angle but if Presti moves Paul for more assets from Miami, it’ll be a highway robbery of assets for what is *maybe the second-worst contract in the NBA (behind John Wall)*

• Winners/Losers and all of the angles from the trade

• And my favorite angle – the optimistic take that’s excited about Sam Presti having a blank canvas

Non-Westbrook Trade Bullets

• As a dad with young kiddos, this faith-based look at fathering a daughter well was good

• Finished this read yesterday digging into the Ten Commandments – solid summer read