Nov. 16—Mike Gundy may have unintentionally told on his team at his weekly press conference.
“Good football teams are going to make plays,” Gundy said. “You’re not going to go into a game and just stop people, so you have to minimize them the best you can.”
Outscored by 42 points, outgained by 315 yards, 2 for 12 on third down — if that’s not getting outright stopped, then this reporter doesn’t know what is.
It’d be unfair to say Oklahoma State is not a good football team. Its five-game winning streak proved it’s at least that.
Still, Big 12 champions, which the 2023 Cowboys hope to be, don’t lose conference games the way they did to UCF.
Here’s every champion’s worst loss since the title game returned in 2017:
2017 Oklahoma: 38-31 loss to Iowa State
2018 Oklahoma: 48-45 loss to Texas
2019 Oklahoma: 48-41 loss to Kansas State
2020 Oklahoma: 37-30 loss to Iowa State
2021 Baylor: 24-14 loss to Oklahoma State
2022 Kansas State: 38-28 loss to TCU
The largest margin of defeat was 10 points, and those two teams went on to avenge the losses in the championship game.
What about the runners-up? Simply making it to Arlington and losing to Texas would be a huge accomplishment given how OSU’s season started.
2017 TCU: 38-20 loss to Oklahoma
2018 Texas: 38-35 loss to Oklahoma State
2019 Baylor: 34-31 loss to Oklahoma
2020 Iowa State: 24-21 loss to Oklahoma State
2021 Oklahoma State: 24-21 loss to Iowa State
2022 TCU: undefeated in the regular season
So the worst loss for a runner-up was by 18 points. This year’s OSU team is good, but it might not be good enough.
The Cowboys must win out to go to play in AT&T Stadium. They can’t afford anymore slip ups.
It’s not just that they lost big to UCF. It’s how it happened.
When the Golden Knights jumped out to an early lead, they didn’t — couldn’t — make it competitive.
With the heavy reliance on Ollie…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/cowboys-rewrite-history-big-12-045900741.html
Author : Stillwater NewsPress, Okla.
Publish date : 2023-11-17 04:59:00
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