Watch: Mike Gundy Talks 27-13 Win Over Central Arkansas
STILLWATER – Oklahoma State struggled early on in the game, but bounced back to beat Central Arkansas in the season opener, 27-13.
The head coach was true to his word and played three quarterbacks, starting with redshirt freshman Garret Rangel, who finished the game going 10-of-15 for 118 yards with one touchdown and one interception. He also rushed for 18 yards on three carries. Alan Bowman was next with 13-of-24 passing for 80 yards. Gunnar Gundy finished the game for the Pokes and went 7-of-9 for 106 yards and rushed for 20 yards on two carries.
The Cowboys combined for 453 yards, while the defense held UCA to 391 yards.
“Good win for us, we found out a little bit about our team,” said head coach Mike Gundy. “I’m excited about watching the tape tomorrow and really looking at details in certain players, how they played, where we’re at, looking at our concepts/schemes. We dropped too many passes offensively, and we didn’t rush the ball as well as we needed to in the first half. We made some adjustments and rushed the ball much better in the second half. We ended up averaging almost five yards a carry, and we still need to run the ball better. In the first quarter and first half, I could tell we didn’t really have that many live practices because we didn’t tackle well, but we got better as the game went on. I will say this, they have a few undersized guys who were pretty nifty, and not real easy to get down. But we need to tackle better. Obviously, we gave up one long pass at the end, we were up by three scores, the one thing we don’t want to do is give up a deep throw so that’s a good learning experience for us. Let them throw the ball underneath, rally up and make a tackle. We were decent on third down, need to be better. We had a few too many penalty yards for me. I like to stay in that 30-yard category; we were up to 41. Either way, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. I told the team each week the talent level will get better and better. We have a good starting point now, we’ve got to go to work this week and have a good week of practice.”