The Top 5 Quotes from Mike Gundy’s Pre-Tulsa News Conference

STILLWATER — After suffering as big a loss as any living Cowboy fan has ever seen last week, the Cowboys will get back in the saddle Friday night.

Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy met with the media Monday ahead of his team’s 6:30 p.m. Friday game against Tulsa. Here are five things he said that stood out. Video of his full news conference is below.

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1. How Did the Cowboys Respond?

With the Cowboys having so many first-year players on the roster, it was fair to wonder how the group would respond to the 69-3 shellacking the Cowboys took in Eugene.

We’ll see on the field Friday night, but Gundy said he liked the response through the bye week practices.

“We had good practices last week,” Gundy said. “Four practices. And came back, had a little workout last night. They’ve done well. …

“I think they were excited to get back out there. I mentioned to them and the staff this morning, the players last night: their practice last night was really good, really crisp, emotional and enthusiastic and all those things.”

2. On Zane Flores

Wrapped up in the dumpster fire that was that football game in Oregon, OSU quarterback Zane Flores made his first college start.

Flores went 7-for-19 against the Ducks with 67 passing yards and two interceptions (both pick-sixes). That’s not the ideal opening start, but so little went right for the OSU offense that day. Through his first two college games, he’s completed 51% of his 39 pass attempts for 203 yards.

He has had an extra week to prepare as the Cowboys’ starter. Here’s what Gundy said about his quarterback.

“He’s coming along,” Gundy said. “He’s young, inexperienced. I don’t think he’d played in a game in over two years, so there’s some development going on with him. He should get a little bit better every day. …

“Every play that he is in is going to help him down the line. Every game that he’s in, every practice he’s in is going to help him moving forward. I said this for years, I’ll say it again: There’s no fast forward button, in my opinion, with a young quarterback. It takes time and experience. Our job is to put them in the position to have the best shot at success.”

3. On Tulsa

Tulsa will travel to Boone Pickens Stadium at 1-2 under new coach Tre Lamb.

The Golden Hurricane beat Abilene Christian 35-7 to start the year, but Tulsa has since fallen to New Mexico State (21-14) and Navy (42-23). Through three games, Tulsa ranks 63rd nationally in total offense, gaining 401 yards a game.

“They played better last week, in my opinion,” Gundy said. “They’ve improved. They have the other quarterback (Baylor Hayes) that’s playing now and it looks like to me he’s more comfortable and they’ve gotten better. They played, and I don’t want to speak for them, but I thought they played their best game last week and they’ve continued to improve. They’re young. They know they’ve got new guys and such. You know, they’re kind of working through some of the same issues a lot of schools are.”

4. Expect the Running Back Rotation to Continue

Through two games, the Cowboys have used five running backs, and it doesn’t look like that heavy rotation is lightening.

Kalib Hicks, Sesi Vailahi, Trent Howland, Rodney Fields and Freddie Brock have all taken carries out of the backfield for OSU.

We looked last week whether guys have started to statistically stand out from the pack. Gundy said Monday that OSU hasn’t gotten to a point where it can trim the rotation.

“Well, we haven’t got that far yet,” Gundy said. “We haven’t been in position to say, ‘OK, one of these guys is taking over.’ We are fortunate that we have a number of guys that we feel confident that can have success, but we’re not in a position to just say this guy is gonna take off with it yet through the first two weeks.”

5. Big 12 Parity

Don’t look now, but the Big 12 appears to be in utter chaos again.

Kansas State is this year’s Oklahoma State — a team predicted to fight for the title but has looked woeful on the field.

Meanwhile, a school like Houston might be the Arizona State of the season. The Cougars are up to 3-0 and have a relatively favorable Big 12 schedule (whatever that means in this upside down conference).

“I don’t know how you predict anything,” Gundy said. “I really don’t. … Three or four years ago I said that this is going to turn into the NFL, right? And you’re going to see these teams that are beating each other, and everybody’s going what’s happening? So that part, I was true on. I was dead on that, and that’s what’s happening right now. …

“It’s the same thing in the NFL, right? You can see a team that’s like 4-6 play a team that may be 7-3 or 9-1 or something, and they beat them, and you’re like, ‘How does that happen?’ Well, there’s parity in that league. There’s parity in college football to a certain extent beyond whatever the highest elite group is. I don’t know how you can predict any of it anymore.”