How Oklahoma State football beat West Virginia with a simple plan: 'Make 'em stop Ollie'
Scott WrightThe Oklahoman
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — For one of the few times all day, Oklahoma State running back Ollie Gordon II looked back.
He’d been charging ahead in controlled recklessness all day, but he knew his team needed him to slow down for once as he neared the end zone for what would be his fourth touchdown and the Cowboys’ final points in a 48-34 win over West Virginia (4-3, 2-2 Big 12) on Saturday at Milan Puskar Stadium.
Gordon had 282 rushing yards on 29 carries, with 141 yards and three touchdowns in the fourth quarter alone. OSU (5-2, 3-1) entered the fourth trailing 24-20, but Gordon scored three times to empower a come-from-behind win in this unexpected Cowboy rebirth. They’ve won three straight games, entering each as the underdog, after two demoralizing losses that seemed to have the program and the season spiraling.
Yet with less than two minutes left, Gordon found himself sprinting in the open field yet again, and when he looked back near the goal line of his 53-yard touchdown run, he seemed to contemplate dropping to the ground short of the end zone.
“Nah, I was trying to kill a little clock,” Gordon said with a smile that only seems to get wider with each increasingly better performance. “I was gonna go (score) either way, but I was trying to kill a little clock.”
Gordon earned his final TD as much as he did the first three. He was the only OSU running back to carry the ball, with quarterback Alan Bowman and receiver Jaden Bray also credited for carries.
And Gordon was just as impactful when he didn’t touch the ball.
On a second-and-goal play from the West Virginia 5 in the third quarter, Gordon left the backfield to line up wide right behind two tight ends in a formation behind that looked clearly designed to get him the ball with blockers on the edge.
At the snap Gordon immediately raised his hands as a target for quarterback Alan Bowman, who immediately went the other way, hitting Jaden Bray for a touchdown that gave the Cowboys a 20-17 lead.
In the fourth quarter, facing third-and-3 at the West Virginia 29, Bowman faked a handoff to Gordon going left, yet the play was designed for Brennan Presley coming out of the backfield to the right.
The diminutive slot receiver caught the pass from Bowman, ran out of one tackle, spun free of another and went for the TD that put the Pokes on top 34-27 with 7:00 left in the game.
From there, Gordon handled it all himself. His two remaining touchdown runs accounted for 99 yards alone, icing on the cake of his phenomenal day.
It seems the door to Gordon’s potential greatness has only just been unlocked. The 6-foot-1, 211-pound sophomore had only two games last season in which he got more than seven carries. He had nine or fewer in the first three games this season.
But in the last four games, against Big 12 opponents, he has rushed for 707 yards on 97 carries (averages of 176.8 yards per game and 7.3 per carry on 24.3 attempts) with six touchdowns. That doesn’t count the 116 receiving yards he had a week ago.
Yet his coach has a simple message for him.
“Stay humble,” coach Mike Gundy said. “He’s been hungry for a month-and-a-half and he’s playing good. I was concerned about it last week and I said, ‘Ollie, you need to stay humble. You’re only as good as tomorrow, you’re only as good as your next practice, you’re only as good as your next game. Cincinnati could care less what you did.
“As soon as he starts thinking that he’s arrived, it’s just karma, man, it doesn’t work out well.”
That doesn’t seem to be an issue for Gordon.
“I always stay humble,” Gordon said. “You gotta stay hungry.
“I could act like everything, the world is mine, or I could just be humble, stay hungry and keep playing great with my teammates.”
A sign of his humility, Gordon once again credited his blockers for the stellar day. And their midseason turnaround after OSU’s 2-2 start deserves such credit.
On Saturday, the Cowboys dealt with injuries up front. Left tackle Dalton Cooper’s status was uncertain, but he played all day. Left guard Jason Brooks Jr. left the game early in the third quarter, not to return, and Jake Springfield missed a brief moment, being replaced by Taylor Miterko.
Yet it was Brooks’ replacement, Cole Birmingham, who had a key block on Gordon’s 46-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter, and the line overall played yet another strong game after looking like the team’s weak link in late September.
“Our twos are as good as our ones, so it’s not even really like a one or a two,” Gordon said. “It’s really just like different personnel. For them to step up and handle business in this game is a huge thing, and they’ll just have to be prepared as we go on.”
With his increased workload of late, Gordon is showing himself as a back who grows stronger late in games.
“Keith Toston used to do that,” Gundy said, referencing running back who was a force for the Cowboys from 2006-09. “Keith Toston was better in the fourth quarter than he was in the first quarter. If somebody said, ‘Is (Gordon) getting stronger or not?’ you’d have to say yes.
“We wanna get him going downhill. He’s that type of runner. Get him going downhill and let him make cuts and use his strength.”
These Cowboys are far from a fully developed team. The passing game still deals with occasional inconsistencies, and injuries are nagging at the receiver group. Bowman threw for 210 yards, completing 24 of 36 passes (66.7%) with two touchdowns and one interception.
The defense was popped again with big plays, giving up six plays of 25 yards or more, two of which were touchdowns and a third that set up another score.
But the defense is making enough plays and showing enough progress to offer excitement about the future.
Add Gordon’s blossoming stardom — he was the Doak Walker Running Back of the Week last week, and an immediate favorite for the honor again — and this team has upside that was hard to fathom a month ago.
Late in the third quarter on Saturday, when Gordon seemed to really be heating up, Gundy shared his thoughts with the offensive staff on the plan moving forward — and it might turn out to be the crux of the plan the rest of the season
“I’m not the smartest coach in the world, but I said guys, we gotta lean on Ollie,” Gundy said.
“We gotta make ‘em stop Ollie. We gotta pound him. Which we did.”
