What Mike Gundy Said Monday in His Week 2 Radio Show

Mike Gundy held his weekly radio show on Monday night to break down OSU’s Week 1 win over Missouri State and to look ahead to a Week 2 matchup against Tulsa.

Here are the highlights of his appearance.

• “I was glad to get out of there. We didn’t do a very good job in certain areas of solidifying the game. Most of it was coaching, some of it was playing. We were ahead by 20 points and we had a chance to hit a couple deep throws that would’ve put us up by 27 … in most cases, that’s going to be the game, that’s it. We didn’t hit those throws, which we normally hit those.” He added that he thought Shane played “good.”

• “We made mistakes we normally don’t make. I thought we were more prepared mentally for this opener than we were in year’s past. But I mean it’s so difficult to read young people nowadays. Obviously we weren’t.”

• “After they got that fumble [on the kickoff], I thought ‘Well I don’t know, maybe this game’s not meant to be.’ Cause I hadn’t really been in a game like that where we had made that many mistakes. At some point you figure if you keep making mistakes like this you don’t deserve to win. . . but the defense came out and was fantastic, again.”

• “We were able to get away from making some poor coaching decisions. Then the players made some mistakes, with turning the ball over and such. If you’re negative-two in turnovers, you’re going to have a hard time winning games.”

• “Langston Anderson I was just bragging to you, in my office, I said I was so thrilled and excited for him because he’s gone three full weeks, had great practices, hadn’t had any injuries. Then he has a severe, some sort of foot injury, in warmups. So then here comes 85 [Jaden Bray] in there playing. And, what, nine months ago he was out there playing Norman North. And he’s basically starting.”

• “Aden Kelley, he’s from Thomas, he’s cutting wheat and running a disc and hog hunting and eight months later he’s out here rotating in because we had a couple guys that are injured, one guy got dinged up during the week. He has to rotate in. At Thomas, I doubt he’s played in front of more than 50 people. And in warmups he sprained his ankle. I asked him what happened and he said he was so excited in warmups he ran and just turned it over a little bit. I said ‘Might try to do something different next time.”

• “We won the game. We need to regroup this week. Should be able to get a few guys back, and get them out there and let them play.”

• “When you have a team that’s like ours, where we’re still playing some young guys and trying to figure out who we are, sometimes openers can be misleading. The key is, as a coach, you gotta identify your issues, come up with a plan to fix them, put that plan in place.”

• “Tulsa had some players that left there and went to other schools. They brought in transfers to replace them, and there’s several of them. On a traditional year where we’re used to competing against them every year, you know who they have, but it’s not that way anymore.”

• “It takes [the offensive line] a few games. With Danny coming in at center, he’s adjusted really well. We didn’t run the ball as well as we should have and certainly not as well as we need to. I was really pleased with our pass protection. Thought we protected better than we have in years. Each week games are going to get tougher and then you get into conference, and we’ll know more. But last year and the year before we didn’t protect great. I just think we knew what we were doing and did a good job protecting. If we can get our run game cleaned up and still hold our own in protection then we’ve made some strides. I am fairly sure they’ll come around and we’ll clean up some of that.”

• “The young receivers were average [at blocking]. They gotta learn. They don’t understand their guy is going to come off them and come tackle our guys.”

• “[Tulsa] is pretty much the same. Coach Montgomery stays in his box. They’re well-coached, don’t try to do too much. Defensively they’re very similar to what they’ve done. They’re not going to change a lot in my opinion. Smart coaches don’t change a lot. The quarterback they have is a good player. I watched him on tape. He’s savvy, gosh, I don’t know, 6-foot, runs around and slings it around pretty good, makes good plays.”