How did Ollie Gordon, Oklahoma State football beat Houston? 'It wasn’t crazy by design'
Scott WrightThe Oklahoman
HOUSTON — Quarterback Donovan Smith had just scored a touchdown to pull Houston within one score of Oklahoma State with 7 ½ minutes to play — plenty of time for a rally if the Cougars could flip momentum.
So, with the pressure heating up, OSU offensive coordinator Kasey Dunn turned to the two men who had been carrying the Cowboy offense all night.
First, a Brennan Presley pass to the left, then an Ollie Gordon run to the right.
Sixteen yards between them, and the 23rd-ranked Cowboys were quickly marching toward the game-clinching touchdown in a come-from-behind 43-30 win over Houston on Saturday night at TDECU Stadium.
Presley finished with 189 yards on 15 catches, both career highs, while Gordon went for 164 yards on the ground with three touchdowns as the Pokes rallied from 14 down late in the second quarter, wiped away the gloom that lingered from last week’s beatdown at Central Florida and kept themselves alive in the hunt for a Big 12 Championship Game appearance.
At 8-3 overall and 6-2 in Big 12 play, the Cowboys have a favorable spot in several of the potential tiebreaker scenarios they could land in, should they defeat BYU next Saturday at Boone Pickens Stadium.
The Cowboys wouldn’t have won without their stars Saturday, and their stars wouldn’t have succeeded without each other.
Quarterback Alan Bowman, whose contributions can’t be ignored, completed 29 of 43 passes for 348 yards, his most as a Cowboy.
Houston gave him a lot to digest, using their safeties in a variety of ways. And their early commitment to stopping the run — coach Mike Gundy referred to it as a “stop Ollie defense” — opened opportunities for Bowman to find Presley.
Gordon gained just 38 yards on nine first-half carries, yet Bowman kept hitting his senior slot receiver over and over. Presley had nine catches for 103 yards at halftime, levels he had only reached in three games during his celebrated career.
“We knew there were gonna be a lot of opportunities… for him to touch the football,” Dunn said. “It wasn’t crazy by design to do this. It was just a natural thing you could see happening through practice with the looks we were giving our offense with their defensive structure.
“(Presley) just kept catching the ball and catching the ball, and it was like, ‘Golly, he should have a big week.’ And he did. Bigger than I expected, actually.”
It was far from simple, however. Presley took big hits on multiple plays, including one that seemed to knock the ball out of his hands before he gathered it just before hitting the ground.
“I take hits all the time — probably not this many hits, because I don’t get the ball this much,” said the 5-foot-8, 175-pound Presley. “But I take hits all the time, so it’s something I’m kind of used to. I probably will spend a little more extra time in the cold tub this week and more time relaxing. But can’t really relax too much, because we got BYU next week.”
Presley’s 15 catches were one shy of an OSU single-game record, and he might’ve surpassed that mark had Gordon not exploded in the second half.
The sophomore star had 126 of his yards after halftime when the Cowboys had grown more comfortable with what they were seeing from the Houston safeties.
“We went to a couple different schemes that we didn’t use as much in the first half,” Gundy said. “They still had an extra guy in the box. There’s a couple schemes you can use to handle that if you guess where that extra guy is gonna be, whether he’s gonna be outside or inside. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, and I think Kasey guessed right most of the second half, which is difficult to do.”
Gordon wore a walking boot on his right foot as he spoke to the media on Saturday night, but insists it’s nothing that will linger.
“I’m feelin’ good. If we had a game tomorrow, I’d be ready to go,” Gordon said, smiling with a side-eye glance that left room to wonder just how healthy that ankle really is.
But he said what he said, and he never seemed to slow down. Not after he limped off the field just before halftime. Not after a fresh tape job in the injury tent in the fourth quarter.
He returned strong in both instances, building his season rushing total to 1,414 with 15 touchdowns.
Yet his success might not have come without Presley, whose frequent opportunities came from run-pass option calls.
“Everybody’s trying to load the box and stop (Gordon), so the RPO game becomes big,” Dunn said. “If they’re gonna load up the box to stop Ollie, that means it’s one-on-one for Brennan, or some sort of pressured zone. And that’s where your slot has to step in and have a big day”
Of course, to pin this win on just a few select players would be shortsighted.
The Cowboys trailed by 14 points with 2:30 left in the first half, and to that point, the game hadn’t felt much different than the 45-3 stomping OSU had absorbed a week ago at Central Florida.
“It felt a lot like last week,” Gundy said.
Houston was near midfield with a 23-9 lead, looking to score again before half — “They were going for blood,” Gundy said.
Earlier in the game, OSU had sent an all-out blitz, leaving the defensive backs in man coverage, and Houston quarterback Donovan Smith hit Jonah Wilson for a 60-yard touchdown.
This time, OSU showed the same blitz, but dropped out of it, with Trey Rucker drifting toward the boundary, perfectly placed to intercept Smith’s throw. Rucker returned it to the Houston 22 and moments later, Bowman hit Leon Johnson III for a 21-yard touchdown.
“That was huge for us at that time — the points, yes, but more so the momentum and ‘it’s gonna be OK,’” Gundy said. “That’s why I told them this was a good culture win.
“They kept playing. Those were the biggest plays in the game. Not what happened in the second half, what happened at the end of the first half.”
After the touchdown, the Cowboys forced a punt and managed a field goal to cut Houston’s halftime edge to 23-19. That made all the difference in the third quarter, because Dunn had full use of his playbook.
Gordon got hot. Presley kept making big catches. The defense dialed in, particularly on late downs, stopping Houston on all six of its third- and fourth-down tries after halftime.
“When stuff didn’t go our way in the first half, we just said, ‘This isn’t us. This is not who we’re gonna be. This is not the team that we are. We’re better than this,’” Bowman said. “We leaned on that.
“We’re a really good team. Last week was unfortunate on all ends, but to be able to come back from what we did in this game, on the road, was tough. To be able to do it shows how good the leadership on this team is and how good we are.”
