Five Thoughts on the 2024-25 Oklahoma State School Year

With the Cowboy baseball season coming to an end Sunday evening, the Oklahoma State sports calendar is just about ready to turn to 2025-26.

Dave Smith still has athletes competing at the NCAA Championships, but for the most part, the Cowboys and Cowgirls are done for the summer. Before the offseason truly starts, let’s take a look back at the school year that was for OSU Athletics.

1. Back to the Future

Oklahoma State is a wrestling and golf school.

If you would’ve told that to someone back in 2006, they would’ve told you “Duh,” but if you would’ve gone back three years ago, it might’ve been tough to see the path for the OSU wrestling and golf teams to step so directly into the national spotlight.

Spurred by the dawning of the David Taylor era, Wyatt Hendrickson doing back flips and the Cowboys being as good as they have been in some time, interest in OSU wrestling seems to be as high now as it has been in a while. Although the Cowboys still have work to do to catch up with the four-time defending champion Nittany Lions, OSU is firmly in the title hunt again.

As for the Cowboy golf team, OSU had won a title in 2018, but losing Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra to LIV and Brian Start to the portal in the years following meant the Pokes had to do a bit of a rebuild. That rebuild ended up looking more like a reload. The Cowboys took home national title No. 12 last month, doing so with a lineup of four sophomores and a freshman.

It wasn’t the most fun year of OSU athletics (see the final nine games of the football season), but Cowboy fans should be thankful that in a year where football was as down as its been in sometime and basketball (again) went through a reset that the ole reliable sports of wrestling and golf were there.

2. It Brought Some High Highs

As down as this school year might’ve seemed because of football and men’s basketball, it provided some all-time OSU moments.

Wyatt Hendrickson’s win against Gable Steveson might be the best singular OSU sports moment of this century, much less the school year. Seriously, which moments outdo that? The John Lucas shot? Collin Oliver’s fourth-down sack in 2021 Bedlam? There can’t be many. Of the 1.2 million YouTube views of Hendrickson’s win, I have to have contributed about 350.

Outside of Hendrickson beating Steveson, here are a few of my other favorite moments from the school year:

• Brennan Presley breaking the all-time receptions record against TCU

• The Cowgirl basketball team coming back from down 15 to beat No. 9 TCU

• Baseball’s walk-off win on Sunday to eliminate Georgia

3. And Some Lows

I don’t want to linger on the 2024 football season any more than I have to, but man, that stunk.

Three moments from the season were particularly smelly: An OK West Virginia team running for 389 yards in Boone Pickens Stadium; the 52-0 season-ending loss to Colorado; and the circus that was the Board of Regents reported “standoff” with Mike Gundy.

We’ll get a little more into the Cowboys’ offseason later, but for how dire things seemed back in early December, there seems to be a new energy surrounding OSU football with the new staff and the cavalcade of incoming transfers. That energy boost was much needed after Cowboy fans had to watch their team lose nine times in a row to close the year.

4. Predictions Mean Even Less in Chaotic Portal Era

Take a look at where these five OSU teams were predicted to finish in the Big 12 going into this school year vs. where they actually finished:

Football — 3rd ➡️ 16th
Men’s basketball — 14th ➡️ 12th
Women’s basketball — 11th ➡️ 3rd
Baseball — 1st ➡️ 7th
Softball — 1st ➡️ 4th

Men’s basketball was close. Other than that, you might’ve been better off betting the opposite of those preseason polls. And I don’t even think it’s the pollsters’ faults either — whether it’s coaches or media. It’s hard enough to keep on top of the roster comings and goings of one team, much less 16, and have an educated argument as to how good that team will be compared to these other 15 teams that also have a ton of new players on them.

Gundy has long said that rankings shouldn’t come out until October or so. In the runaway train that is modern media, that’s not going to happen, but now more than ever you have to judge college teams on how they are actually playing as opposed to what you think they might be.

5. How Will History Remember the Football Offseason?

This year was the first time that the OSU football program had to use the portal to the extent the Cowboys did. OSU added more than 30 transfers this offseason — an offseason unlike any other in OSU’s history to this point.

In 20 years, will we all look back at this offseason as a sign of the crazy portal era times? Or is this just going to become commonplace? I reside in the camp that hopes something gets done about just how easily players are able to jump from one school to another. But with each passing day, the college athletic landscape just seems more like a mess that needs to be figured out.

Maybe legislation sets guard rails soon and we all look back at this time like a fever dream. Or maybe this is the first offseason of a new normal for OSU football.