Black Beats Orange, Young Guys and Newcomers Shine

STILLWATER – Oklahoma State held its annual Spring Game on April 24 and after taking last year off due to COVID, it was an absolute blast to be watching football towards the end of April again.

True to his word, Mike Gundy ran all 115 spring football players out during the nearly two-and-a-half-hour Spring Game/practice. They started off with some practice drills, followed by a few 7-on-7 demonstrations, followed by the two 20-minute 11-on-11 halves.

It was a defensive battle from start to finish as the black team snuck past the orange, 27-19.

“It was obviously a great day for us; the weather was perfect, the crowd was awesome and the players competed,” said head coach Mike Gundy. “We were able to get a lot of action. I’m fairly sure that most everybody played at least 15 snaps, which was our goal, to get everybody in and the opportunity to play. A number of guys were able to make some plays. We didn’t get anybody injured, so I was excited about that and today was a great finish [to spring football] for us. It’s been the best spring for us since I’ve been the head coach. So, I’m excited for this team.”

Spencer Sanders saw the bulk of the snaps for the orange team in the first half, while Shane Illingworth took a bulk of the snaps for the black team.

As the title eludes to, a good portion of the big-time plays were made by younger guys and newcomers. Team Black was solid as Shane Illingworth finished the day going 16-26 for 236 yards and two touchdowns, Jaylen Warren rushed for 95 yards on 14 carries, and one rather impressive hurdle, freshman receiver Jaden Bray hauled in five receptions for 89 yards and two touchdowns.

For Team Orange, we saw Spencer Sanders go 22-30 for 154 yards and one touchdown, Tay Martin haul in six receptions for 71 yards and running back Zach Middleton was a workhorse as he finished the day with 19 carries for 65 yards and seven receptions for 17 yards. Brennan Presley also finished with six receptions for 54 yards and a touchdown.

As predicted, Mike Gundy didn’t show too much of his hand offensively, but we did learn a few things. First thing’s first: the running backs aren’t three deep, they’re more like LD Brown got a majority of the snaps for the orange team, followed by a good amount from Zach Middleton towards the end of the first half and a bulk of the second half. On the black side, we saw a lot of Utah State transfer Jaylen Warren.

We didn’t see much of LD Brown past the first half as he got banged up a bit, but ran off the field. We also didn’t see either Dezmon Jackson or Dominic Richardson, or either of the Green twins, Bryson or Blaine.

With the exception of a few plays towards the end of the first and second halves, the defense on both sides were solid most of the afternoon.

“I was excited about our tackling; it’s one of the areas I’ve concerned myself with,” said Gundy. “You try to protect the players as much as possible, but there’s a point where you’ve still got to tackle and go play. I thought we tackled pretty well today for not having as many reps at tackling as what we would want to do. In the end, we stayed on top of the offense. We didn’t give up many deep balls, in the end we gave one up, but other than that, I thought we defended well and tackled well.”

As Gundy mentioned, there were a few deep passes given up, a 48-yarder to Jaden Bray and a 61-yard touchdown to Rashod Owens, but the bulk of the defense was solid. In fact, a majority of the scoring came from field goals, four field goals on the orange team by Brady Pohl, including one from 39 yards and two from 48 yards, and a 38-yarder on the black team by Mason Shipley.

The good thing about the Spring Game is both teams showed a lot of promise, especially on both sides of the ball. You combine the both defenses and both offenses back together and football this fall looks very promising.