The Top 5 Quotes from Mike Gundy’s Post-UCF News Conference

ORLANDO, Fla. — For just the eighth time since taking over as the Cowboys’ coach back in 2005, Mike Gundy’s squad was held to single digits.

Oklahoma State lost to UCF 45-3 on Saturday in The Bounce House. Here are the top five quotes from Gundy’s postgame news conference with video of his full news conference below.

Bedlam Letdown Wasn’t the Issue

About this time last week OSU students were marching the goalpost that once resided in the east end zone of Boone Pickens Stadium to Theta Pond.

When the Cowboys got off the field Saturday, it looked like they’d been in a pond and had just lost by 42 points to a UCF team that entered Saturday below .500. That begs the question of whether Saturday’s performance had anything to do with the emotional high the Cowboys were riding. Gundy said he didn’t think so, that his team practiced well this week.

“All I can do is go off what I see,” Gundy said. “It’s going both ways. They scored but we went right down the field, we’re rolling pretty good and then we fumbled. So that fumble, does that mean they got a good hit or we weren’t ready to play? I haven’t seen it. And then the other time we threw an interception on the 12-yard line, bounced off a helmet.

“So I don’t think it would be fair to say we weren’t ready. We were ready up until those things happened. As far as the emotional side of it, all I can go off of is what I know from practice and then watching them at the hotel yesterday. I just don’t think there was an emotional hangover, I think what I said earlier had more to do with the game than that.”

On Gordon’s Struggles

Ollie Gordon was starting to get some national pub the past week or so, but his Heisman campaign hit quite the snafu Saturday.

Gordon rushed for just 25 yards on 12 carries, as the Knights loaded the box and gave Gordon nowhere to go. Gordon’s longest run of the night was five yards. It’s made all the more painful that the Knights had the worst rush defense in the Big 12 entering Saturday.

“I don’t think we blocked very good,” Gundy said. “I don’t think he had a lot of places to run the ball. I mean, I would have to watch the tape to be fair, but I don’t know that we covered guys up and gave him creases in this game like he’s had the last four or five games.”

What Getting Outcoached Means

Saturday wasn’t the first time this season Gundy has stepped in a postgame news conference and said he and his assistants were outcoached.

The Tulsa World‘s Dean Ruhl asked Gundy whether it concerned him that this wasn’t the first time he has said that this season.

“Well we’ve been pretty good the last six weeks,” Gundy said. “You understand now, coaches have schemes going in games and sometimes ours are better than theirs and theirs are better than ours. And sometimes players play better than we did and so forth. We would like to say that we would like to outcoached everybody 12 times a year, but probably not going to happen.

“I’ve been doing this a long time and there’s been times you get home and watch the tape and it’s like ‘Gosh, that just wasn’t very good scheme-wise and concepts for this or we underestimated that they could do this.’ And that happens. That’s just coaching. That’s just part of it. And in this league and in college football now with all the things going on, the parity is there. Every week you’re not so much better than the other team that of your concepts aren’t as good and they play better than you you can’t just overcome that.”

Cowboys Can’t Throw Away the Tape

Every once in a while, a team will talk about burying a ball. Sometimes they literally bury a ball.

Gundy said his Cowboys won’t do that. No matter how dreadful this performance in less-than-ideal weather conditions was, he said the Cowboys can’t up and forget about this loss because they have to learn from it.

“No we don’t throw it away,” Gundy said. “We have to learn from this. [UCF] is going to be a good football team in this conference, they’re located in an area where a three or four [hour] drive and there’s probably two or three hundred offers. This is going to be a good school in this conference. So, we need to learn from this. We need to watch this tape as coaches as hard as that is we have to watch it and take notes and learn and we have to give the information to players, the things we think can help us next game.”

How the Pokes Bounce Back

After Bedlam, the Cowboys were tasked with refocusing and getting ready for this game in Orlando.

The Cowboys will head back to Stillwater and again be tasked with refocusing, but this time with a different set of emotions.

“It’s the same,” Gundy said. “And that’s not really coaches’ talk, that’s every week. And I shared it with them then. I said you know last week we were riding high and I was worried about all your emotions and now your challenge is to face adversity and face the facts when things don’t go well, coaches and players, and then you have to move forward. There’s nothing we can do about this game, but we learn from it.

“Guys have got to come back, some of them will come in tomorrow and work out and practice and get ready to play another game and get ready to play on the road. The teams that we are playing in this league are pretty equal to us, so we got to be ready to play each week.”