OSU beats Tulsa

The Cowboys started their season with a win, beating Tulsa 59-24.

STILLWATER — It was one of those nights Oklahoma State defensive coordinator Glenn Spencer had to love.

Plenty of praiseworthy plays by his defense. Nothing that put the Cowboys’ 59-24 victory in danger. But more than enough meat left on the bone to have a full week of work in film study and on the practice field.

In a year when hopes are as high as they’ve ever been in Stillwater, with championship aspirations — both conference and national — the Cowboys’ season started exactly the way it needed to in front of a sellout crowd of 56,790 on Thursday night.

The offense attacked with big plays and quick scoring drives, just as expected.

More importantly, the defense was reliable facing unknown circumstances. Tulsa never announced a starting quarterback, and rotated between Chad President and Luke Skipper throughout the game.

Neither could get the offense past the 50 until the middle of the second quarter. The Golden Hurricane didn’t get to 200 total yards until late in the third.

Still, it wasn’t a perfect night.

Third-down defense

was scary. Turnovers were late to come. Tulsa’s quarterbacks had a little too much running room.

“Our defense has got to do a better job on third-and-20,” said coach Mike Gundy, who opened his postgame news conference with his frustrations of the night before breaking down the aspects he liked.

“They work that hard to get ‘em in third-and-long, then let ‘em stay on the field. We’ve got to do a better job of containing the quarterback on the pass rush.”

Through three quarters, President had more rushing yards than the rest of the team combined, mostly coming on scramble runs after pass plays broke down.

Tulsa converted 16 of 26 third downs, and eight of them were third-and-7 or longer.

Turnovers were elusive, too, with a couple interception attempts slipping through Cowboy fingers. One of those misses was by linebacker Kenneth Edison-McGruder, who made up for it not long after, with the Cowboys’ first takeaway of the night.

When Skipper stumbled in the backfield, then lost the ball, Edison-McGruder scooped it up and went 82 yards for a touchdown late in the third quarter.

Though the game appeared well in hand in the early minutes of the fourth quarter, the defense came up with a fourth-down stop at its own 11. And a defensive lineman punched the ball out of running back Shamari Brooks’ hands on Tulsa’s next series.

The new starters at cornerback played well, and avoided getting burned by the deep ball. Ramon Richards and Tre Flowers seemed to be incredibly comfortable in their safety roles.

The defensive line’s depth showed through, going two or three deep at each position against Tulsa first-teamers.

And the linebackers showed their speed, particularly in the run game.

The night wasn’t perfect, but it was more than enough to support an offense that included a 303-yard passing performance from Mason Rudolph, a 132-yard rushing game by Justice Hill and big plays galore from the highly touted receivers.

With road trips to South Alabama (Sept. 8) and Pittsburgh (Sept. 16) coming up, the OSU defense has two more opportunities to improve on the weaknesses and sharpen the strengths.

A championship season cannot live on offense alone, and bigger tests await. But Thursday night was an encouraging start.

“For the most part, I thought they played really well, with the exception of third-and-really long, which is somewhat unusual,” Gundy said. “We’re all fired up when it’s third-andlong. We gotta get off the field.

“We’ve got a long ways to go. Obviously, it’s a good start. Even though we have a veteran team and a pretty good team, you’re always nervous that first game. You don’t know what you’re gonna get.”