How Oklahoma State football, Ollie Gordon II never panicked in 2OT win vs. Arkansas
Scott WrightThe Oklahoman
STILLWATER — As a grinding, difficult day wore on, Ollie Gordon II’s emotions bubbled up.
A little extra trash talk after plays had ended, a little extra pleading his case to officials when he felt he’d been wronged.
The Oklahoma State running back spent the better part of four hours running into the brick wall that was the Arkansas defensive line.
And yes, his emotions bubbled — but never boiled over.
Then, when the time came to be the hero, Gordon was ready for the call, producing his longest rush of the game for what turned out to be the winning score of a 39-31 double-overtime victory for the 17th-ranked Cowboys against Arkansas on Saturday at Boone Pickens Stadium.
You won’t see the first 16 of Gordon’s 17 carries from Saturday on the Heisman highlight submission. And the last one, a fairly simple 12-yard scamper to the end zone, wasn’t exactly his most magnificent performance, other than the stakes that hung on every step.
“We got our ass kicked in the running game,” coach Mike Gundy said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
For all the difficulty Gordon had in trying to find running room, the final TD almost seemed to come too easily.
“When (Brennan Presley) came in motion, I just looked at it and analyzed it before the snap,” Gordon said. “The D-end tried to spike inside. They didn’t really have the edge set. BP was out there blocking his butt off. All our receivers were. So it worked perfectly.”
But three months from now, when the nitty-gritty of an early September Saturday is an afterthought, and all that matters is how many games your team won, the Cowboys will have an extra tally in that column because Gordon didn’t let his first 16 carries hamper his 17th.
“At the end of the day, you gotta think about the team,” said Gordon, who finished with 49 yards rushing, plus another 20 on two receptions. “It’s not a ‘you’ sport, it’s a ‘we’ sport. Just keeping it in my mind at all times, I feel like that’s what got us through it.”
The struggles weren’t all on Gordon.
For most of the first half, the Cowboys did little right as a team. Aside from cornerback Kale Smith’s 73-yard interception return touchdown, and a few other isolated plays, the Pokes got dominated for the first two quarters.
Arkansas had a 21-7 lead and had outproduced OSU in yardage 351-77 at the break.
But like it did multiple times last year, halftime brought a reboot the Cowboys’ way. OSU trailed in the second half in five of its 10 wins last season, two of them by at least 14.
So this was not a new trend, but not a comfortable one, either.
“We wasted the first half,” Gundy said. “Their coaches had better concepts and schemes than our coaches did. Our players got out of position some, but for the most part, I thought, particularly through the first quarter-and-a-half, that they had better concepts, they did a better job of scheming than we did.
“And then at halftime, our coaches were fantastic, the adjustments we made. Players were really good about absorbing information, not panicking, not pointing fingers, taking it back out on the field and executing it.”
Gundy had warned about Arkansas’ “girthy” defensive front, which frequently plugged holes when Gordon ran the ball.
“They loaded the box, they played physical,” Gordon said. “It’s only Week 2, we haven’t really dealt with fully loaded boxes.
“They tried to man our receivers outside, which wasn’t great with a veteran quarterback, veteran receivers. Not really a smart idea.”
Halftime adjustments couldn’t get the run game going, but quarterback Alan Bowman came to life after a mediocre start.
In the second half and overtime, Bowman completed 18 of 30 passes for 262 yards, one touchdown and two crucial two-point conversions. All told, he finished 27 of 48 for 326 yards, adding in a first-half interception as well.
Brennan Presley was targeted 19 times, catching nine for 91 yards and a touchdown, plus a rushing TD.
The defense had a similar turnaround, though the Razorbacks still produced plenty of yardage. After giving up 351 yards in the first half, Arkansas added 297 in the second half and overtime, but only tacked on 10 more points.
“Everybody that came back from last year, we been through this,” linebacker Kendal Daniels said. “Going through that, we knew we’d get stops and the offense would get the ball rolling and we’d come together as a team.
“We love each other. We know the offense got the defense’s back, the defense got the offense’s back. We put both of those together, and it says a lot about our team, being able to build on this.”
And of course, it was a defensive stand that closed out the victory, with Daniels shooting through the running lane for a tackle for loss on fourth-and-1 at the OSU 6.
Experience in college football is lauded, but viewed more as a value in individual talent. For this Oklahoma State team, experience paid off in comfort in tight, stressful situations, like Saturday’s 14-point, second-half deficit, or the weight of a double-overtime moment with the game on the line.
“Coach Gundy puts us in weird situations in practice, like we’ll go in two-minute drill and we’ll have 45 seconds to go from the (opposite) 25,” Gordon said. “We never really panic. When our back’s to the wall, we fight back, we don’t give up.
