Notebook: Gundy Talks Crowd’s Effect on Recruiting, Cornelius’ Game-Clinching Run, Keeping Things Simple

STILLWATER — Mike Gundy entered his weekly media luncheon in a bit of a rush Monday.

Gundy said he was in a hurry, then went on to talk for well over half an hour. Here are expanded looks on a few of Gundy’s topics.

Homecoming Atmosphere’s Affect on Recruiting

Homecoming is always a recruit-heavy weekend at Oklahoma State, and this weekend was no different.

Gundy said there were about 23 prospects in town when the Cowboys took down No. 6 Texas. He said the fanfare surrounding the great game should go a long way in securing the future of the program.

“I’m going to guess that all of them left saying this is a big time college football environment,” Gundy said. “It makes a big difference. … Kudos to the fans and alums and everything, but it can’t just be homecoming. It’s gotta be every game.”

Gundy said the 56,790 sellout is something that needs to be done more often to continue to develop OSU’s program to an elite level. Gundy said he realizes its a chicken-and-egg scenario as to whether fans come and on-field success follows or on-field success brings in fans, but he said in recruiting specifically, atmosphere is important.

“That was the best atmosphere that we’ve had in a long time here in my opinion,” Gundy said. “If we want to continue to grow this program, it can’t just be the coaches and players. It’s gotta be the people involved. I’m thankful for everybody that’s here. I’m an Oklahoma State guy, but everybody has a role to play and everybody has to do their part.”

Gundy said he wasn’t exactly sure what made Saturday nights crowd so special. He threw out ideas like no mass exodus at halftime and beer sells.

He was later asked how big the team’s bowl streak was in recruiting, he said about half the time parents don’t know how his team is doing.

“We’ve been fortunate,” Gundy said. “We’ve won a lot of games the last few years. You get in their, you’re excited, you think they know that you’ve been ranked in the Top 15 in the country and all that. I’ve had ’em ask me, ‘Hey Coach, what was your record this year?’ I said (jokingly), ‘Right now we’re 12-0.’ ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Yeah we’re doing good.’ They might not even check.”

Cornelius Had an Option to Give on Game-Clinching Third Down

With 1:37 left on third-and-6, Taylor Cornelius had the courage to pull the ball from star running back Justice Hill to run for a first down.

On Monday, Gundy said the play was a read, and OSU seldom has him pull it away from Justice by design. Thankfully for Cornelius, Gundy and the OSU faithful, Cornelius made the right choice, but it has to take guts to not give the ball to the program’s eighth-leading rusher.

“They’re all reads,” Gundy said. “The number of times that he’s kept the ball based on us just telling him are so minimal I can’t even remember them. Most everything that we do here is some sort of a read — either a two-way or three-way read.”

Simplification Key in Cowboys’ Resurgence

Gundy has said for weeks that the team will tell how good a job the coaches are doing on Saturdays, and for the past few weeks, it hasn’t been great.

Against Texas, though, Gundy said the coaches did well. Gundy said the coaches took a step back and simplified things, instead of having too many wrinkles available where players could get lost.

“We were probably doing too much,” Gundy said. “If you’re in a situation where you’re not as mature or you’re maybe limited, you have younger players, you should go backward instead of going forward.

“It’s all about execution. Having a clear mind so they can have fast feet instead of a clouded mind and slow feet. We’ve played with a lot of slow feet over the last month.”

Sounds as if Eric Taylor might be on staff.