Series History: Oklahoma State Is 0-2 against UCF

The Cowboys have yet to get a win over the Knights, but maybe their third try will be a charm.

Oklahoma State will come out of its bye week by hosting Central Florida. The Cowboys are 3-1 but have won their last three games, starting with a home upset win over then-No. 6 Oregon and went into their off week with a road win over West Virginia. The Knights are 3-2 after falling 27-17 on the road to No. 22 Houston. UCF has yet to win a road game.

As stated, this is just the third meeting between the Cowboys and the Knights, but the Cowboys have never hosted. Let’s see what we can take from the teams’ two previous matchups in Orlando.

Capsule

Overall record: UCF leads 2-0
Neutral site meetings: N/A
Meetings in Stillwater: N/A
Meetings in Orlando: UCF leads 2-0
Past 10 meetings: UCF leads 2-0
First meeting (2023): UCF defeated OSU 45-3
Most recent meeting (2025): UCF defeated OSU 17-14

The two results might seem counterintuitive on the surface. The Cowboys got bludgeoned by the Knights during an otherwise up year in 2023 but came pretty close last season on their way to going winless against the FBS. Guess that’s the problem with a small sample size.

In 2023, the Cowboys were making their final brilliant surge under Mike Gundy. After laying an egg at home to South Alabama, the Cowboys dropped one on the road to Iowa State to start 2-2. But then they clicked in, winning five-straight including home wins over three ranked teams: No. 18 Kansas State, No. 23 Kansas and then finally No. 15 Oklahoma.

We wondered if the Cowboys would view Orlando more as a vacation than a road game, still gluttonously hungover from winning the final edition of Bedlam. Whether or not that counts as an excuse, the Pokes were near no-shows in the Space Game at UCF. The Knights blew their doors off 45-3, holding Ollie Gordon to just 25 yards on 12 carries. That was a season-low 2.1 yards per attempt. In a monsoon, Alan Bowman also logged his worst game of the year, completing just 53% of his passes for 225 yards, zero TDs and three interceptions.

The Cowboys would bounce back with wins at Houston and against BYU and still made a Big 12 title game. They got thumped pretty hard by Texas but took it out on the Longhorns’ rivals, Texas A&M in the Texas Bowl, a final bright spot under Gundy.

Two years later, the Cowboys were outscored by an average of 19.2 points per game. If you removed their one win over FCS opponent UT-Martin, Oklahoma State got outscored by 250 points, and average deficit of 25. But the Knights let them get the closest.

OSU showed up in Orlando this time on the opposite of a high. The Pokes were on a nine-game skid led by lame-duck head coach, and it was basically all about the moral victories. This wasn’t one, but it was close. But they came out hot.

Zane Flores turned in one of his just two games as a Cowboy with multiple TDs. He threw for one in the first quarter and rushed for one in the second. Meanwhile, Flores’ counterpart, UCF quarterback Tayven Jackson threw two interceptions in the first half. The Cowboys rolled into halftime up 14-0.

But Jackson got the last laugh, throwing TDs in the third and fourth quarters before Flores threw a pick deep in his own territory with 57 seconds to go. That allowed UCF to seal it with a 34-yard field goal.