The Rundown: Gundy on West Virginia, Dru Brown and Sanders Injury

The Cowboys have rattled off four straight conference wins heading into Bedlam.

Oklahoma State beat West Virginia 20-13 on Saturday in Morgantown to advance to 8-3 on the season. After the game, OSU coach Mike Gundy talked about the win, how his backup quarterback played and the status of Spencer Sanders in his postgame news conference.

• Gundy starts in saying he is proud of the team and coaches.

• He said the switch from Spencer Sanders to Dru Brown came on short notice. Gundy said OSU had one day to prepare with Brown.

• Gundy praised Brown for taking care of the football.

• “In the second half, we just started riding Chuba.”

• Some of the stuff West Virginia does on defense forced OSU to throw to Hubbard more.

• “Jim (Knowles) and them did a nice job. They had a good gameplan, brought a lot of pressure in the second half, particularly on the last two drives.”

• “It was a good win. You come out here, you play early in the morning on kind of a deary day. In the second quarter we were ‘blah.’ We just were ‘blah.’ Came in at halftime, the guys kinda self-started again.”

• OSU picked up the tempo in the second half partly because Brown was more comfortable with it: “He did that out west. I say west, way out west. It was Hawaii. He’s comfortable with that.”

• On Brown: “I was really proud of him, 22-of-29, 200 yards passing, two TDs, and we didn’t protect for him very well in the first half. To be honest with you, he played real good. … He didn’t get over aggressive. He managed that game well. Quarterbacks that manage the game well give you a chance to win.”

• “I told the staff on Tuesday, when we started to kinda lean toward Spencer wasn’t going to really do much, I said, ‘You know, (Brown is) gonna be nervous, but he has played.’ He’s played probably at places like Boise (State) and Fresno (State) and San Diego State and all that. It helped. But his demeanor in practice and his demeanor today and his ability to process information in the game and on the sideline, I thought was excellent.”

• Berry Tramel asked how much of not using the quarterback run game was because it wasn’t Sanders out there and how much of it was because they couldn’t also afford to get Brown hurt: “Both. You sat in our staff meetings. I started calling for (quarterback runs) in the second half, and Sean (Gleeson) ran some of it. Because we didn’t have that, they were running with Chuba. Wherever Chuba went, they were going, which is pretty smart. So we started doing some of it in the third quarter and early fourth quarter, and it helped us a little bit. … There’s no secret, you gotta be smart. When you’re in the position we are, we gotta protect our guys as best we can, but we also have to do what we can do to win.”

• Jarret Doege played well.

• OSU had good linebacker play, particularly from Amen Ogbongbemiga.

• On Ogbongbemiga: “It’s interesting, he didn’t feel good this week. He didn’t practice very good. He was just kinda under the weather, didn’t feel good, so I was really concerned about that. But obviously he got over it and played well today.”

• On Kolby Harvell-Peel: “Peel, he’s having a big year. His play is fantastic.”

• On sending seven pass rushers on West Virginia’s final fourth-down play: “We thought about playing coverage, but we all kinda said, ‘Hey, they’re either gonna tie the game here or you’re gonna win.’ Not trying to be sarcastic, it’s a big difference between fourth-and-12 and fourth-and-5 because now you can play your (coverage) guys off. And (Doege has) 1.8 seconds to get rid of the ball because somebody’s coming unblocked. Then if you just stay off and rally and tackle, you should be in good shape. But you still gotta do it.”

• On watching Gunnar Gundy play Friday night in Yukon: “Those are special times for me. I don’t have hobbies. These guys that follow me around, this is my life and my kids are my life. That’s all I do. I’ve missed a lot of his games. He’s been playing for four years, but he’s a senior and he’s a state semifinalist. It’s just not something I could pass up on.

“The truth of the matter is this, if it was something that was really important, I would tell you guys. We did all of our work yesterday. We have all our meetings, special teams meetings, practice, position meetings, run-throughs, walk-throughs, I meet with them and talk to them. They grab a sandwich and get on a plane, they land here, they put their stuff in their room, they eat dinner and then we don’t see them until this morning. I bet half the guys didn’t even know I wasn’t there, truthfully. And if they can’t take care of themselves for about seven or eight hours, we got serious issues.

“Plus Coach (Kasey) Dunn’s here. He’s second in charge. He took over and probably did a better job than I did. I bet if you polled them, I bet half of them wouldn’t even know I wasn’t here. They all sit up in first class and get the good seats. Coaches sit in the cabin seats, so a lot of times they don’t even see me on the plane. Some of those knuckleheads probably didn’t even know I wasn’t there. They probably just thought, ‘Hey he must’ve missed dinner last night or something.'”

• “The levels of victory at times are somewhat based on what your situation is. We make a transition in the middle of the week based on quarterback, and you come out here, you’re going a long ways from home, you’re playing early in the morning. As I said it’s a little bit deary and kinda chilly, and you’re just set up for a lot of different things, but the reason we’re having success is because the defense is playing good.

“These are like real games now, 20-13. It’s like football used to be. People are huddling up. They played with a little turbo. We played with more turbo today than we have in a month. These are almost like real football games.”

• “Offensively, Chuba has been through the roof. That’s a whole different cat, but otherwise, we’ve had success the last six weeks for the most part based on our defense. They kept us in games. They keep putting us back on the field.”

• On Sanders’ injury: “I don’t know the term other than it’s a lot like what Drew Brees had. It’s interesting, last week he played three series with it. Basically his thumb, it doesn’t have any attachments. I don’t know what it’s called. I think there’s a ligament or something in there. I made a C in biology. Did better in kinesiology. He threw the ball to (Dillon) Stoner, the long pass, and he didn’t have any thumb.

“He’s a competitive little guy. He’s kinda like the Tasmanian Devil. He just keeps rolling all the time. Finally the doctors made him come out. Then they went down on Tuesday, I don’t know whatever day, they said he needs to get it fixed. Four to five weeks.”