Oklahoma State Practices Wrapping Up and Gundy Happy with Team's Focus
HOUSTON, Texas – Mike Gundy stood at midfield with his team surrounding him following the two and half hour practice on Saturday inside the University of Houston indoor facility and he praised the team for their effort and focus in the bowl practices throughout, but he was especially happy with their efforts since arriving in Houston. He talked about how it is easy to get to a bowl site and kind of go through the motions in practice with everything that is going on. He was happy with the way they were putting in the work.
He also updated the team on an injured teammate. Back-up tight end Ian Edenfield, the transfer graduate player from California University of Pennsylvania went down in the final hour of practice with a serious leg injury and was transported by the onsite medical team to a nearby hospital.
Edenfield suffered a lower leg injury and will miss the game. He had played primarily special teams and is a popular teammate. He later rejoined the team at the hotel.
Last night at the Rodeo Bowl event, Gundy was asked by the media about the practices and the unique aspect of this game with Texas A&M having a temporary coaching staff for this game in advance of former Duke head coach Mike Elko taaking over the program and so many A&M players in the transfer portal or declared for the NFL Draft.
“Times have changed in college football, and we’ve used these practices to get better at what we do, then we put in game plans for Texas A&M. We don’t have much of an idea about what’s going to go on, so we’ve worked hard just trying to improve ourselves. Texas A&M has a lot of good players, I know they have a lot of players that aren’t playing in this game but some of the guys that were playing behind them are still good football players, they’re a very, very talented team. We’ve worked some on Texas A&M, but more so just on Oklahoma State.”
I can vouch from witnessing that the Cowboys are practicing with intensity and the final period on Saturday was another scrimmage period with the young players very similar to what they have done all season and with an intent on working toward the future with those players as well as the present with the prep for the bowl game.