The Rundown: Gundy Talks Halftime Tweaks, Sanders’ Performance Post Tulsa

The Cowboys had an ugly quarter followed by a solid second half.

Oklahoma State beat Tulsa 40-21 on Saturday at H.A. Chapman Stadium to move to 3-0 on the year. The game brought plenty of talking points, and here is a breakdown of what OSU coach Mike Gundy said in his post-game presser.

• He starts with shouting out the defensive coaches’ adjustments in the second half and the players executing those adjustments on the field.

• “They got after us pretty good in the second quarter. Got us tired and ran the ball down our throats.”

• Tulsa was in an “all or nothing defense” with all the press man the Golden Hurricane played. They were either going to make a big play or give one up.

• “I’m gonna look into the unsportsmanlike penalties. We’re getting conflict of interest. Our guys are saying one thing, they’re saying another, being the referees. I’m assuming the referees are right, but we’ll find out what happened on those.”

• Gundy said he called the play that led to Kolby Harvell-Peel’s fourth-and-goal sack. He said he gets involved in defensive calls “about twice a game.”

• Taking away the two unsportsmanlike penalties, OSU would’ve given up 50 penalty yards, a number Gundy said isn’t the end of the world. But those are the type of penalties he talks about with discipline.

• Gundy said Jayden Jernigan’s unsportsmanlike was “some kind of verbal communication.”

• The bare bones of the defensive adjustment at halftime was adding an extra body to the box.

• Tulsa was doing exactly what it wanted to do in the second quarter in controlling the clock and running the ball.

• Spencer Sanders played “OK.” “He got flustered in the second quarter a little bit, and I had to calm him down. Very competitive. Wanted to do a couple things different, and we really couldn’t do it based on what they were doing. We got him calmed down, and then he was good.”

• Sanders’ touchdown run was him improvising. Gundy said Tulsa “house blitzed” a few times, and that time Sanders saw it and got to the edge in time.

• “It’s sad. Mr. Pickens and I went head-to-head a lot. He won most all of them. But I had a lot of respect for him, and I think he respected me. Between Mr. Pickens and President (Burns) Hargis, Coach (Mike) Holder, and myself, we won a hell of a lot of football games and been successful. He’s been his own boss for 70 years, and I’ve been mine for 15. So sometimes you have confrontation, but I have a ton of respect. “It’s kinda sad, ya know. It’s sad knowing that he’s not there. It really is, and it feels weird. We’ll have a couple nice tributes to him, and them I’m sure we’ll have some stuff at Karsten Creek and on campus for him to remember his legacy forever.”

• OSU has depth at on the defensive line, just not experience.

• On a day like Saturday helping Sanders in the long term: “Those things will help him as we go along. Won’t be the last time. He wants to win. He wants to be good, so he’ll get frustrated. But he calmed down really well. Didn’t lose his thought process, in my opinion. He’ll get better as we go along.”

• On if he was tempted to start warming Dru Brown up: “(Sanders is) frustrated with success, not frustrated in a negative way. So, you let him go, put him back out there. The next series is when he took off against the house blitz and he scored, so he’s fine.”

• Time will tell if Chuba Hubbard is one of the elite running backs of the Gundy era.

• Tylan Wallace basically had nine catches for 178 yards because of the pass interference calls he drew.

• Gundy said he feels better after Tulsa than in the other games because of how well the defense played in the second half.

• OSU has a lot of work to do going into the Texas game.

• On Kansas and K-State picking up early wins on the weekend: “It’s good for the Big 12. It’s good for all the fans and the media and not good for the coaches.”