Oklahoma State University Athletics
Photo by: Bruce Waterfield
Gundy Previews Sugar Bowl
December 31, 2015 | Cowboy Football
PHOTO GALLERY
NEW ORLEANS – The Allstate Sugar Bowl hosted its head coach press conference Thursday morning, with Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy meeting with media. Some of his comments:
Coach Mike Gundy
Opening statement:
"On behalf of President Hargis, my football team and university, we're very excited about our week in New Orleans in the Allstate Sugar Bowl. Our hospitality has been tremendous. Our players have had a great four or five days. We have really enjoyed the food, the people, and are looking forward to another day of preparation and then getting ready to play in the game."
On J.W. Walsh possibly playing his last OSU game in the Sugar Bowl:
"It has been a great experience for the team. J.W. will always have a special place in the hearts of the Oklahoma State family with the way that he has handled his career, and he has had a great three weeks of preparation. I have enjoyed watching him and I feel like he is looking forward to playing in the game. I think that, as he has in every game, he will give us great effort and hope that he plays well and has an opportunity to enjoy his career. It would be nice if for some reason we could get another year, but if not, I'm glad he gets to finish his career in the Sugar Bowl."
On the importance of having a fun experience as a team:
"It's important for our staff that they enjoy the bowl week, an opportunity to be in a great city like New Orleans, to be around their team, the experience, and what we try to tell them is that there's not many times in their life they're in an environment like this. I joked with them after practice the other day. We get on the buses at the hotel and drive the wrong way down a trolley path on buses with police escorts and they stop the traffic on Canal Street. I challenge them to have some type of an opportunity later in their life where somebody would do that for them, and I just stress to them the importance of college football and the importance of the Sugar Bowl and the opportunity that they have. They seem like they're enjoying themselves this week. They have practiced well. We have been fortunate that we have been in a number of bowls now, and for our coaching staff, you want your players to be healthy. You want them to be fresh. You want them to play hard and have a great game so they will have that memory the rest of their life. That they had an opportunity to be in a tremendous bowl like the Allstate Sugar Bowl, and that they went out and played as hard as they could for their teammates. And if they can fall back on that in the end, then it will be a productive game and I think our team has put themselves in that situation this week."
On Ole Miss:
"Very talented team. I had mentioned to the group the other day that if you take 15 starters on offense and 15 starters on defense, and I know there's 11, but you rotate a few in, if you just say there's 15 on each side of the ball there's an additional six or eight that play on their special teams. So you come up with about 42 to 45 players. I don't watch a lot of football on the West Coast and the East Coast, but man for man they could be as talented as a team as anybody in the country, give or take based on certain college football fans' opinion on quarterback play, running back play, receiver play, D-line play, so on and so forth. But Ole Miss has recruited a very talented football team. The quarterback has come in and has been a very active player, has been a competitor in our opinion. Their wide receiver also, Laquon [Treadwell], we have watched him develop and he has a future to play for a long time, and defensive line-wise, very strong and physical, a lot of speed on defense, can run side to side. So it's a talented group. We will need to play our best game and put ourselves in position to have success based on the talent level that Ole Miss has in this game."
On facing an SEC opponent:
"I think it's always fun to play teams from other conferences. Over the last six or eight years, you hear a lot about the Big 12 and the SEC so I think it's important that we play the very best game we can. There's a lot of talk about the college playoff system and when teams from our conference and the SEC compete against each other, if that could have an effect on the committee and the way they think. I'm not sure, obviously I have never been in those meetings, but it's important for us to prepare and play in every game. And I say this each year. We come up with plans and our preparation is to play the very best game we can and we want to win every game we play in and that's the approach that we have had in this bowl game."
On if he anticipates an offense-heavy game:
"We have a lot of respect for Ole Miss's offense and we have had success at times offensively. It's interesting in bowls, as soon as you start to guess it's going to be a high scoring affair, defenses play their tail off. Then sometimes I have been in bowl games where we were expecting it to be low scoring and it goes the other way. The only thing that I'm somewhat convinced with is that Ole Miss is a really good football team and we feel like we have a really good football team. It will be interesting to see what the matchup is based on four weeks of preparation."
Â
Players Mentioned
QB
/ Cowboy FootballWednesday, August 05
Thursday, July 30
Tuesday, July 28
Monday, July 27
