Five OSU football questions, including this: When will Bill Young return?
Published: 9/10/2012 8:59 AM
Last Modified: 9/10/2012 8:59 AM
In the aftermath of a loss at Arizona, five questions about OSU football:
1, When will defensive coordinator Bill Young return?
Young missed the first two games of the season after undergoing and undisclosed medical procedure. Coach Mike Gundy said Young’s “guess-timate” for a return was 7 to 10 days and that should expire Monday or Tuesday.
Gundy said he hasn’t sat down and talked with Young about when he plans to return or if doctors have green-lighted Young.
But, said the coach, “I think he will be back this week.”
Added Gundy, “He’s been really good for us. We are down one full time guy. Any time you are down a guy, you move on and you can only control certain things, but you want to have all your people, so it will be nice to get him back if they release him and let him work.”
2, Who gets the blame for the Arizona loss?
There was plenty to share. “If you want to see how you are coaching, just turn the tape on,” Gundy said. “You just turn the tape on and you see what happened and it didn’t look like to me that we coached very good. Then (players) are responsible for making poor decisions and getting personal fouls.”
The defense did not play well, giving up 59 points and 501 yards. But Gundy also said the OSU offense (because turnovers gave Arizona a short field) didn’t help the defense.
OSU scored on consecutive touchdown drives to start the game and then went six consecutive possessions without scoring. Arizona responded with 30 unanswered points.
“I know it just felt like we started off great and everything from there, at least until the second half, felt like we were one step forward, two steps back,” offensive coordinator Todd Monken said.
“We were finding ways to just hurt yourself. And there came a time where we couldn’t help our defense because we were doing that. There is ebb and flow of a game.... That’s how you complement as a team and we didn’t complement our defense when they needed our help.”
3, Did Arizona beat OSU? Or did the Cowboys beat the Cowboys?
The answer is a little of both. Gundy made sure to credit Arizona in postgame comments. But he and players also suggested that the Cowboys beat themselves thanks to a 4-0 turnover deficit and a school-record 167 yards in penalties.
“It was nothing they did,” running back Joseph Randle said. “It was what we did.”
“We just had too many things that you don’t win with -- dropped balls, turnovers, penalties,” offensive coordinator Monken said. “Who are you going to beat (doing that)? Who are we kidding? I’m really not that mad or frustrated. We did it to ourselves.
Regarding the self-destruction, Randle said, “I hate to say it, but that’s kind of more encouraging than them just outright beating us. It was really us that made the mistakes and we paid for it tonight.”
Said receiver Tracy Moore after the game, “That wasn’t OSU football tonight. We can come back next week and have no penalties and no fumbles just like that, but it’s something we’ve got to emphasize in practice.”
4, Were there any positives in the game?
“I think Wes (Lunt) handled playing on the road pretty well,” Gundy said after the freshman quarterback matched a school record for pass attempts and set school and Big 12 records for passing yards by a freshman.
“Tracy Moore (four TD receptions) made some big plays for us. Joe (Randle) put the ball on the ground one time, but for the most part our running backs ran the ball pretty well. I thought that the team battled. There wasn’t anybody pointing fingers or anything like that, which can happen in the situation that we were in (Saturday) night.”
5, Lunt threw for 436 yards. How many yards would he have accumulated if the Cowboys hadn’t dropped seven balls?
“Drops are always an issue,” Gundy said. “But if you are going to pick your poison, I would take some drops before I would take turnovers because I can always punt it if I drop it.”
Lunt threw three interceptions -- one that was returned for a touchdown, one that led to a touchdown drive and one on a second-and-5 play after OSU had reached Arizona’s 29.
Written by
Jimmie Tramel
Sports Writer
