Top Five Quotes from Mike Gundy’s Post-Iowa State News Conference

AMES, Iowa — The Cowboys’ perfect season ended in Jack Trice Stadium two years ago. Their imperfect start to this season continued Saturday.

Oklahoma State fell to Iowa State 34-27 on Saturday. Here are five things OSU coach Mike Gundy said after the game with a video of his full news conference below

1. The Quarterback Carousel Stopped … For Now

For the first time this season, an Oklahoma State quarterback played an entire game. That quarterback was Alan Bowman.

Throughout the nonconference, Oklahoma State used Bowman, Garret Rangel and Gunnar Gundy in each game.

Gundy said Bowman practiced well and gave OSU the best shot in this scheme, but when asked whether that meant he is the guy going forward, Gundy wasn’t ready to publicly commit.

“I can’t give you that answer right now,” Gundy said.

“I’d rather not go into details and talk about all that,” said Gundy when asked when they told Bowman he would be the starter.

2. Bowman Played ‘Pretty Good’

As far as Bowman’s play, he went 23-for-48 for 278 yards, two touchdowns, two interceptions and a rushing touchdown.

It’s the most passing yards an OSU quarterback has thrown for since Spencer Sanders threw for 381 in Bedlam last season. It’s the most amount of yards Bowman has thrown for in a game since throwing for 384 against Oklahoma State in 2020 with Texas Tech.

“Looked like he played pretty good,” Gundy said. “Decision-making, what I heard on the headphones, seemed to be good. I didn’t hear of a lot of poor decisions, so I thought he played pretty good.”

3. Pursuing a Balanced Offensive Identity

When the Cowboys used three quarterbacks a game, it was tough to say what the group’s identity was.

Although Saturday wasn’t the result OSU nor its fans were after, it felt like it was a little easier to see what this team is trying to become with a 100-yard rushing performance from Ollie Gordon paired with 48 pass attempts.

“We want to be balanced,” Gundy said. “We want to be able to rush the ball for four yards a carry, would help. We have to be good at play-action pass and throwing the ball around a little bit. I told the team just from watching it, I thought we competed and got ourselves back in the game late. I was proud of them for that.

“… We put ourselves in a position to have a chance to win the game. We didn’t get that done, but I thought the guys fought back and competed all the way through.”

4. Defensive Concern

Iowa State came into Saturday’s game averaging 16.7 points a contest before dropping 34 on the Pokes.

Redshirt freshman quarterback Rocco Becht threw for a career-high 348 yards and three touchdowns and wasn’t sacked.

With this coming a week after the Cowboys gave up 33 to South Alabama at home, Gundy was asked his concern level about his defense.

“We need to do a better job on third down,” Gundy said. “Concerned? I’m not concerned. We’re learning it. I think our guys are playing hard. We need to try to work through a couple drop coverages. We had a couple dropped coverages a week ago, we had a couple today. If we can work through those, I think it’ll help a lot.”

5. Not Worried About Morale

This season hasn’t started the way the Cowboys thought it would.

The Pokes haven’t started 2-2 since 2016. In some foreign territory, it’s a wonder how OSU will respond moving froward.

“I’m not worried about their morale,” Gundy said. “I’m not worried about their team chemistry. The thing I have to do is be honest with them. What I told them is the same thing I told you. My job is to look and see what happened. If we came up short, what went wrong and how to fix it.

“… I asked them to continue to support each other and stay strong during a time of adversity. We give grades week to week, we’ve talked about this, when you come up short then you’re dealing with adversity because your goal is to win each week. I don’t feel any issues with the team at all. I think they’ll practice hard. … In the last quarter, I thought we played hard. I thought our guys were running to the ball, offense was fighting their a– off, guys are trying to protect, quarterback was running, defense was trying to make plays. I thought we competed. As long as we do that, we’ll continue to get better each week.”