Oklahoma State University Athletics
OSU-Utah Postgame Quotes
September 21, 2024 | Cowboy Football
Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy
On the defense…Â
"I told you guys earlier in the week, the thing I was concerned about was being able to stop the run. We gave up about 5.7 yards per carry. We only rushed for 3.1 per carry, which makes it difficult to win. I will say this. The defense was on the field all day, which made it extremely difficult for them. Honestly, I thought they played really well. You can only be out there so much. It made it really difficult. The one statistic that is going to stand out more than anything is fourth down. They weren't any good on third down and we weren't good on third down, but on fourth down, they were good. They had a couple busted plays for conversions on fourth down and kept drives alive. But what I told the players is the same thing that I've told you guys – early in the season, college football, in my opinion, about half the games are given away. Teams don't win, the other team just gives it to them. I have a ton of respect for them. Ton of class in that organization. Well coached, great guys after the game. Very class, first class, all the way and came and played physical and ran the ball, but I felt like, I told the team, 'You guys gave them a game.'"
Â
On pulling Alan Bowman for Garrett Rangel…
"Sometimes, we don't do it a lot here, but sometimes, you've got to get a guy out of there and calm him down a little bit… Things move so fast during the game that it's hard to get that part of it, but I just felt like we weren't getting good play, and we needed a relief pitcher and get somebody else in there. And Garrett had a tough day. So we switched back. But as I said, we haven't done that a lot here, but sometimes you've got to get a guy out and clear your mind a little."
Â
On the offense's struggles running the ball…
"We kept running it, and the crowd was frustrated. They were booing, I mean, I understand, but we didn't get away from it. But the reason we didn't is because it was still, for a long time, a one score game, and then it was only a, what, a 10-point game or something. So,] you can't get away from it, which we didn't. The reason it felt like we did is because we didn't have very many plays. We had 59 plays. So that's like 25 plays less, or 30 plays less, than normal. So that's why it looked that way. We didn't abandon it."
Â
On if he saw any quit in his defense…
"Not their faces ever. The guys did a good job. But I know it's in their bodies, like Ruck (Trey Rucker), Ruck cramped up and he was out in a while. The guys did a great job. Like, I'll just tell you what I told them. I told him that I saw leaders today. I saw guys on defense, that I saw five (Kendal Daniels), and I saw four (Nick Martin) and I saw three (Cam Smith) and I saw 99 (Iman Oates) and 33 (Obi Ezeigbo) and some guys trying to be leaders on defense. Because when you get off the field and then you're back up, you get back up and you get off the field and then you're back up, it gets frustrating. They didn't even faze, it didn't faze them. They kept going in that huddle, and I walked in there to be a cheerleader. I didn't need to be a cheerleader. They were good. They said, 'Coach, we're good.' I said,'Wwell try to get another stop. I need one more stop.' They were good."
Â
On Utah's defensive success…
"I didn't think that our plan for attacking their style of play was good, but I'll be very honest with you here, it's like people talk about our program a lot, and they'll say, 'They win a lot.' You can talk about them a lot, and their defense always plays good, right? They did today. We could have been better. We could have attacked them better and could have gotten better play. But I'm going to give them credit because somehow that seems to happen a lot with them, and I'm going to say that it's probably not by accident."
Oklahoma State offensive lineman Joe Michalski
On the offensive line struggles…
"It's frustrating because you want to do good, you want to be successful every time you can, but there's just roadblocks in life where you're in a struggle sometimes. And it's something that's not okay, something not acceptable and something that we're going to keep working to improve every week, like the struggles last season at times that sort of prepare this team to bounce back from something like this."
Â
On losing one game and season not being over…
"No one in that locker room has given up. There's a lot of football left. I know everyone has complete faith that we will get the run game turned around, get everything else turned around. There's no one in there that doesn't have the confidence that we had to begin the season."
Â
Oklahoma State safety Trey Rucker
On not facing QB Cam Rising…
"We prepared for the scheme more than the quarterback. I feel we were good quarterback wise, and even though Cam didn't play, I don't think that affected how we played."
Â
Oklahoma State wide receiver Brennan Presley
On first-half offensive struggles…
"It was one of those days where everybody had a part, but especially the receivers, l can speak for the receivers since it was our game to take over and we just didn't do that today. We all feel bad about it. But as much as I say, move on, you've got to learn from it, you've got to remember how much this sucks. You've just got to sit back in back your mind and play with it."
Â
Oklahoma State linebacker Nick Martin
On defensive success…
"I think nobody labored. Everybody was locked in. Everybody never had a doubt that we would not lose this game all the way to the last second. Just making sure that we made the plays that came to us – we missed some but made most of them. I'm proud of my guys. I'm ready to get back to work."
Â
On this being the best defensive performance this season…
"We've definitely got to make some improvements. I say that we started out fast. We started out well. That was the real goal, just leave this, make sure this started fast. I think we did that well. I think we can look at tape and see our effort and be okay with that, and obviously we've just got to make sure that we fix mistakes."
Â
On the defense's mindset on the sidelines…
"It shows how tight knit we are and how much of a family we are. It's guys really believing that, believing in each other, making sure that we don't get down. Control what we can control and making sure that we step up to the plate each play."
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham
Opening statement…
"Made that more dramatic than we needed to, but we handled it well and got the win. Proud of our guys. Didn't always play as smart as we needed to. Had a chance to put the game away completely, let them back in it. Credit them for continuing to fight and battle. Very proud of the freshman quarterback. When you put things in perspective, you come into the No. 14 team in the country's home stadium with a true freshman QB and you come away with a win, that's pretty impressive. So, proud of our guys, proud of him. Proud of Micah Bernard, gave us another huge day, nearly 200 yards. We were the more physical football team without question. Rushed for (249 yards), gave up about 50 yards or less rushing, so that tells the tale of the line of scrimmage right there. Made some nice plays up the field on deep balls and then the quarterback stuck some things in there that we just didn't play as well. But overall, great start to the Big 12 Conference schedule. It's just every week now, with a couple byes mixed in. We've got to get ready for a tough game next week. Apparently, we came out of the game pretty healthy, we'll find out a lot more tomorrow. We've got some bumps and bruises, but we came out with nothing significant. (Cameron Rising), the timeline is when he's ready, he'll be ready. That's all I can say. We were hoping he'd be ready this week. It was literally a game time decision. It wasn't a game day, it was game time. We came into the locker room after warmups, had a little conference and decided what gave us the best chance to win was Isaac (Wilson), and Cam agreed. That's the direction we went so that's that. Proud of the defense. The defense played lights out until the midpoint of that fourth quarter and then we went soft. Anyway, good win, really good win. Just to keep going one week at a time."
Â
On the Utah rushing attack…
"Our plan is to be a physical run team and then use the play-action pass off that run game. You saw the touchdown to Brant Kuithe, it was the biggest play of the game. So we tried to use the run game when we were trying to run out the clock and they were stacking the box, but it was a great catch and great concentration by Brant. If you can run the football and control the football for 42 minutes and they only have it for 17 minutes, that's a huge discrepancy. We make 22 first downs and they have 11, so again, there are some real statistical imbalances to say we should have won by a lot more, but that's how it is. Never discount a win, particularly against a ranked team on the road. Like I said, I couldn't be more proud of our football team."
Â
On Isaac Wilson's performance:
"I liked that he just kept hanging in there. Never got down on himself. Threw a couple picks, didn't flinch. You saw his ability to run. He ripped off that 40- or 50-yard run, that was huge at that point in time. Dipped his shoulder and made another tough run down in the red zone that got us a first down. He's just a competitor just like Cam. Both of them are competitive guys that want to win and are very confident guys."
Â
On slowing down Ollie Gordon II:
"It was our first time facing him, and the tape last year was very impressive. He hasn't really gotten on track this year, but I'm sure he will. But, he hasn't yet and so we were pleased that he waited one more week to get on track because he's a terrific back. Over 2,000 yards of offense last year, but this year he just hasn't found his groove just yet, but he will. He's just too good of a player not to."
Utah quarterback Isaac WilsonÂ
On making big plays with his legs...
"(The) Team trusted me so I had to go make the play. They (OSU) were giving us 0 coverage pretty much the whole game, no one was manned up on me, so when I broke the pocket, I knew it was going to be there."
Â
On the offense's final drive...
"I had full trust in our offensive line and Micah (Bernard). I'm sure everyone knew we were going to run the ball because all we needed was 10 yards."
Â
On the time of possession difference...
"I see that we had 42 minutes, and they (OSU) had 17. That's how you take control of a game. The defense did their part in keeping them off the field."
Â
Utah running back Micah Bernard
On a career-high 25 carries...
"This is the most carries I've ever had, and I've been working for the last five-six years trying to get to this level to where coaches trust in me and believe in me to have 25 carries. It's been a long time coming, and I'm glad that I got everybody's trust in order to give me the ball and just go out there and make plays."
Â
On his explosive runs...
"Everybody wants them to be on the first, second or third run, but if you keep getting the rock, I get more comfortable as the game goes on, big ones will bust like this."
Â
Utah cornerback Smith Snowden
On the defense's mentality...
"Our mindset is cool, calm and collected, always. No matter the circumstance, we're always going to be even keel and always trust that the players on the field are going to make big-time plays."Â
Â
On the success of the defense today...
"It's all about our culture, RSNB, relentless-smart-nasty-ball hawks. (Morgan) Scalley does a great job to get us prepared and have a good feeling about what they want to do and what they want to run. It's definitely coach just having us prepared."
Â
On the defense…Â
"I told you guys earlier in the week, the thing I was concerned about was being able to stop the run. We gave up about 5.7 yards per carry. We only rushed for 3.1 per carry, which makes it difficult to win. I will say this. The defense was on the field all day, which made it extremely difficult for them. Honestly, I thought they played really well. You can only be out there so much. It made it really difficult. The one statistic that is going to stand out more than anything is fourth down. They weren't any good on third down and we weren't good on third down, but on fourth down, they were good. They had a couple busted plays for conversions on fourth down and kept drives alive. But what I told the players is the same thing that I've told you guys – early in the season, college football, in my opinion, about half the games are given away. Teams don't win, the other team just gives it to them. I have a ton of respect for them. Ton of class in that organization. Well coached, great guys after the game. Very class, first class, all the way and came and played physical and ran the ball, but I felt like, I told the team, 'You guys gave them a game.'"
Â
On pulling Alan Bowman for Garrett Rangel…
"Sometimes, we don't do it a lot here, but sometimes, you've got to get a guy out of there and calm him down a little bit… Things move so fast during the game that it's hard to get that part of it, but I just felt like we weren't getting good play, and we needed a relief pitcher and get somebody else in there. And Garrett had a tough day. So we switched back. But as I said, we haven't done that a lot here, but sometimes you've got to get a guy out and clear your mind a little."
Â
On the offense's struggles running the ball…
"We kept running it, and the crowd was frustrated. They were booing, I mean, I understand, but we didn't get away from it. But the reason we didn't is because it was still, for a long time, a one score game, and then it was only a, what, a 10-point game or something. So,] you can't get away from it, which we didn't. The reason it felt like we did is because we didn't have very many plays. We had 59 plays. So that's like 25 plays less, or 30 plays less, than normal. So that's why it looked that way. We didn't abandon it."
Â
On if he saw any quit in his defense…
"Not their faces ever. The guys did a good job. But I know it's in their bodies, like Ruck (Trey Rucker), Ruck cramped up and he was out in a while. The guys did a great job. Like, I'll just tell you what I told them. I told him that I saw leaders today. I saw guys on defense, that I saw five (Kendal Daniels), and I saw four (Nick Martin) and I saw three (Cam Smith) and I saw 99 (Iman Oates) and 33 (Obi Ezeigbo) and some guys trying to be leaders on defense. Because when you get off the field and then you're back up, you get back up and you get off the field and then you're back up, it gets frustrating. They didn't even faze, it didn't faze them. They kept going in that huddle, and I walked in there to be a cheerleader. I didn't need to be a cheerleader. They were good. They said, 'Coach, we're good.' I said,'Wwell try to get another stop. I need one more stop.' They were good."
Â
On Utah's defensive success…
"I didn't think that our plan for attacking their style of play was good, but I'll be very honest with you here, it's like people talk about our program a lot, and they'll say, 'They win a lot.' You can talk about them a lot, and their defense always plays good, right? They did today. We could have been better. We could have attacked them better and could have gotten better play. But I'm going to give them credit because somehow that seems to happen a lot with them, and I'm going to say that it's probably not by accident."
Oklahoma State offensive lineman Joe Michalski
On the offensive line struggles…
"It's frustrating because you want to do good, you want to be successful every time you can, but there's just roadblocks in life where you're in a struggle sometimes. And it's something that's not okay, something not acceptable and something that we're going to keep working to improve every week, like the struggles last season at times that sort of prepare this team to bounce back from something like this."
Â
On losing one game and season not being over…
"No one in that locker room has given up. There's a lot of football left. I know everyone has complete faith that we will get the run game turned around, get everything else turned around. There's no one in there that doesn't have the confidence that we had to begin the season."
Â
Oklahoma State safety Trey Rucker
On not facing QB Cam Rising…
"We prepared for the scheme more than the quarterback. I feel we were good quarterback wise, and even though Cam didn't play, I don't think that affected how we played."
Â
Oklahoma State wide receiver Brennan Presley
On first-half offensive struggles…
"It was one of those days where everybody had a part, but especially the receivers, l can speak for the receivers since it was our game to take over and we just didn't do that today. We all feel bad about it. But as much as I say, move on, you've got to learn from it, you've got to remember how much this sucks. You've just got to sit back in back your mind and play with it."
Â
Oklahoma State linebacker Nick Martin
On defensive success…
"I think nobody labored. Everybody was locked in. Everybody never had a doubt that we would not lose this game all the way to the last second. Just making sure that we made the plays that came to us – we missed some but made most of them. I'm proud of my guys. I'm ready to get back to work."
Â
On this being the best defensive performance this season…
"We've definitely got to make some improvements. I say that we started out fast. We started out well. That was the real goal, just leave this, make sure this started fast. I think we did that well. I think we can look at tape and see our effort and be okay with that, and obviously we've just got to make sure that we fix mistakes."
Â
On the defense's mindset on the sidelines…
"It shows how tight knit we are and how much of a family we are. It's guys really believing that, believing in each other, making sure that we don't get down. Control what we can control and making sure that we step up to the plate each play."
Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham
Opening statement…
"Made that more dramatic than we needed to, but we handled it well and got the win. Proud of our guys. Didn't always play as smart as we needed to. Had a chance to put the game away completely, let them back in it. Credit them for continuing to fight and battle. Very proud of the freshman quarterback. When you put things in perspective, you come into the No. 14 team in the country's home stadium with a true freshman QB and you come away with a win, that's pretty impressive. So, proud of our guys, proud of him. Proud of Micah Bernard, gave us another huge day, nearly 200 yards. We were the more physical football team without question. Rushed for (249 yards), gave up about 50 yards or less rushing, so that tells the tale of the line of scrimmage right there. Made some nice plays up the field on deep balls and then the quarterback stuck some things in there that we just didn't play as well. But overall, great start to the Big 12 Conference schedule. It's just every week now, with a couple byes mixed in. We've got to get ready for a tough game next week. Apparently, we came out of the game pretty healthy, we'll find out a lot more tomorrow. We've got some bumps and bruises, but we came out with nothing significant. (Cameron Rising), the timeline is when he's ready, he'll be ready. That's all I can say. We were hoping he'd be ready this week. It was literally a game time decision. It wasn't a game day, it was game time. We came into the locker room after warmups, had a little conference and decided what gave us the best chance to win was Isaac (Wilson), and Cam agreed. That's the direction we went so that's that. Proud of the defense. The defense played lights out until the midpoint of that fourth quarter and then we went soft. Anyway, good win, really good win. Just to keep going one week at a time."
Â
On the Utah rushing attack…
"Our plan is to be a physical run team and then use the play-action pass off that run game. You saw the touchdown to Brant Kuithe, it was the biggest play of the game. So we tried to use the run game when we were trying to run out the clock and they were stacking the box, but it was a great catch and great concentration by Brant. If you can run the football and control the football for 42 minutes and they only have it for 17 minutes, that's a huge discrepancy. We make 22 first downs and they have 11, so again, there are some real statistical imbalances to say we should have won by a lot more, but that's how it is. Never discount a win, particularly against a ranked team on the road. Like I said, I couldn't be more proud of our football team."
Â
On Isaac Wilson's performance:
"I liked that he just kept hanging in there. Never got down on himself. Threw a couple picks, didn't flinch. You saw his ability to run. He ripped off that 40- or 50-yard run, that was huge at that point in time. Dipped his shoulder and made another tough run down in the red zone that got us a first down. He's just a competitor just like Cam. Both of them are competitive guys that want to win and are very confident guys."
Â
On slowing down Ollie Gordon II:
"It was our first time facing him, and the tape last year was very impressive. He hasn't really gotten on track this year, but I'm sure he will. But, he hasn't yet and so we were pleased that he waited one more week to get on track because he's a terrific back. Over 2,000 yards of offense last year, but this year he just hasn't found his groove just yet, but he will. He's just too good of a player not to."
Utah quarterback Isaac WilsonÂ
On making big plays with his legs...
"(The) Team trusted me so I had to go make the play. They (OSU) were giving us 0 coverage pretty much the whole game, no one was manned up on me, so when I broke the pocket, I knew it was going to be there."
Â
On the offense's final drive...
"I had full trust in our offensive line and Micah (Bernard). I'm sure everyone knew we were going to run the ball because all we needed was 10 yards."
Â
On the time of possession difference...
"I see that we had 42 minutes, and they (OSU) had 17. That's how you take control of a game. The defense did their part in keeping them off the field."
Â
Utah running back Micah Bernard
On a career-high 25 carries...
"This is the most carries I've ever had, and I've been working for the last five-six years trying to get to this level to where coaches trust in me and believe in me to have 25 carries. It's been a long time coming, and I'm glad that I got everybody's trust in order to give me the ball and just go out there and make plays."
Â
On his explosive runs...
"Everybody wants them to be on the first, second or third run, but if you keep getting the rock, I get more comfortable as the game goes on, big ones will bust like this."
Â
Utah cornerback Smith Snowden
On the defense's mentality...
"Our mindset is cool, calm and collected, always. No matter the circumstance, we're always going to be even keel and always trust that the players on the field are going to make big-time plays."Â
Â
On the success of the defense today...
"It's all about our culture, RSNB, relentless-smart-nasty-ball hawks. (Morgan) Scalley does a great job to get us prepared and have a good feeling about what they want to do and what they want to run. It's definitely coach just having us prepared."
Â
Players Mentioned
QB
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S
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DE
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RB
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LB
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OL
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NT
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WR
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S
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