On Saturday, South Dakota State and Oklahoma State will meet for the first time on the football field. OSU is a program that has been steadily among the Football Bowl Subdivisions best over the past 15 years, but for those of you that havent been following the Cowboys, heres what you need to know ahead of Saturdays season opener.
Mike Gundy is entering his 20th season as the head football coach of Oklahoma State. He has 166 career victories, which is third among all active coaches in the FBS. His 102 career wins in Big 12 games are third all time, trailing only Bob Stoops (121) and Bill Snyder (104).
OSU has had 18-straight winning seasons, which ties Boise State and Wisconsin for the longest active bowl appearance streak. The Cowboys have won at least 10 games in eight of the past 14 seasons.
The Cowboys are coming off a year where they went 10-4 overall and won the Texas Bowl. OSU started the season 2-2 and then won seven of its next eight games, which allowed the Cowboys to make it to the Big 12 Championship Game for the second time in three seasons. The Cowboys lost 49-21 against Texas in the conference championship but bounced back with a 31-23 win over Texas A&M in the bowl game.
Oklahoma State will head into 2024 as the No. 17 ranked team in the AP Top 25, and for good reason as the Cowboys have 19 returning starters.
The offense is highlighted by returning Doak Walker Award winner Ollie Gordon II. Gordon ran for 1,732 yards and 21 touchdowns as a sophomore last season, which led to him taking home the award for the best running back in the FBS. He was a unanimous All-American and the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year last season and was picked to repeat both heading into this year.
SDSU head coach Jimmy Rogers said Gordon has all of the tools of an elite running back and its going to take a total team effort, coaches included, to slow him down.
If you give him a seam, he can go the distance, Rogers said. Hes extremely fast. My comparison is [former SDSU running back] Pierre Strong, because I got to see Pierre every single day and Pierre was extremely fast. [Gordon] is bigger than Pierre and hes extremely physical. Were going to have to do multiple [things] on defense. Were not going to be able to just load the box, because of what they have on the perimeter, and were not going to be able to play without a box thats loaded.
We have to be on point with the calls and make sure we tackle in space. He does a great job at making the first guy miss and if he makes the first guy miss he can easily get 8-10 yards because hes so fast. Its going to take a full swarm to the ball for 60 minutes to slow him down.
The OSU signal caller is seventh-year senior Alan Bowman. Bowman is entering his second season as the quarterback of the Cowboys after spending three seasons at Texas Tech and two seasons at Michigan. Last year he threw for 3,460 yards, 15 touchdowns and 14 interceptions, while completing 60.7% of his passes.
Bowman has his top-two receivers back from last year in Brennan Presley and Rashod Owens. The two pass catchers combined for 164 catches, totaling 1,886 yards and 11 touchdowns. Presley was named to the Preseason All-Big 12 Team earlier this summer.
On the offensive line the Cowboys have six sixth-year seniors and one fifth-year senior to choose from. Left tackle Dalton Cooper and center Joe Michalski were named to the Preseason All-Big 12 Team. Michalski played 1,035 snaps last season, which was the third-most in the FBS, and had 617 pass blocking snaps without allowing a sack.
DePriest said the SDSU defensive line is looking forward to going up against such a veteran offensive line.
[Their offensive line] is good and experienced. I think we just have to go and play our game. We have some guys [on the defensive line] that have stepped up and Im excited to see what they can do, especially against this O line with how experienced they are. I think were ready for the challenge, DePriest said.
Oklahoma States defense was not the reason the Cowboys won 10 games last season. The OSU defense ranked 86th in the FBS in scoring defense, giving up 28.6 points per game and 111th in pass efficiency defense. According to Pro Football Focus the Cowboys allowed an explosive pass rate of 18.9%, which was 132nd out of 133 teams in the FBS. They also had an explosive run rate of 17.2%, which was 107th in the FBS, and allowed 6.4 yards per play, which was tied for 123rd.
OSU returns 10 starters on defense and despite the lack of success in totality on that side of the ball last season, Rogers expects things to be difficult for his offense on Saturday.
They play with a ton of defensive backs and spread the field. They have really physical defensive linebackers up front and their linebackers are explosive. So, I would say the multiplicity and the change of looks can create issues at times, but we try to be thorough in our evaluation and scouting them and breaking them down to where hopefully we dont have a lot of issues, Rogers said.
Saturdays game will be played at Boone Pickens Stadium. It has a capacity of 53,855 and is the oldest FBS stadium west of the Mississipp River. The Cowboys are 23-3 at home since the beginning of the 2020 season and the 23 wins are the third-most in the FBS, behind only Alabama and Clemson.
SDSU last played in front of an FBS crowd in 2022 at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa and the Jacks lost 7-3. Senior quarterback Mark Gronowski said he thought the Jacks werent fully prepared for the crowd noise in Iowa City, but he feels like theyll have a better idea of what theyre stepping into on Saturday.
Were preparing a little bit differently than how we prepared for Iowa. Iowa we didnt have as loud of crowd noise [in practice] and we were kind of unprepared for that moment in the sense of [crowd noise]. So, this year weve done a good job of preparing by having a speaker inside the huddle and having super loud crowd noise going. I think were better prepared for it going into this game, Gronowski said.
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