Gundy on Baylor Game Postponement "Control What We Can Control"
STILLWATER – It’s been a weird 24 hours for Oklahoma State football. For the second time this season, the Cowboys won’t be playing a football game due to COVID-19 precautions taken by the opposing team. It was announced on Sunday evening the Cowboys’ game against Baylor Saturday, Oct. 17 is being postponed until Dec. 12.
The Big 12 Conference announces the postponement of the Saturday, October 17, Oklahoma State at Baylor football game. Upon the recommendation of medical advisors, Baylor is suspending football operations temporarily after multiple positive COVID-19 test results. The game has been rescheduled for Saturday, December 12. The Dr Pepper Big 12 Championship remains tentatively scheduled for December 12 or 19 pending game results needed to determine the championship game participants.
“Nothing surprises us anymore with this year, you just kind of roll with the punches,” said head coach Mike Gundy said on the Monday Big 12 teleconference. “When we started this [season], we felt like we would run into a game or two where there could be COVID issues on our team or another team. We were working on Baylor for a week; you take that and put that in the filing cabinet and you open up Iowa State.”
This now makes the second week in a row the Cowboys won’t be on the field as they’re coming off a scheduled open week. Mike Gundy and Co. allowed players to go home and see their families this past weekend, but Pokes Report learned several of the players chose to stay in Stillwater.
However, the Cowboys won’t know where they stand with testing until Tuesday as the Sunday test results take 48 hours to come back.
“We seem to be in really good shape,” Gundy said on the conference call. “Our testing on Sunday and Wednesday, we get those results in like 48 hours. Friday’s tests are 15-minute turnaround. So, we haven’t gotten any of Sunday’s tests yet, but we seem to be in good shape. Everybody got back and practiced, we were practicing last night for Baylor – I say last night, [Sunday] afternoon – and then we found out we weren’t having the game. Now we’re on to Iowa State.”
Related: Kickoff time and TV details for Oklahoma State's game against Iowa State have been announced.
Despite this being an unplanned week, coach Gundy said the staff isn’t really concerned with having a second-straight week off as they’ve been preparing for COVID-19 shutdowns since late spring.
“Not really concerned at all,” said coach Gundy. “This has been such an unusual year; we started this back in May, you’re off and on in June, off a little bit in July. Then we got into August and you’re off a little bit. Then we got ready to play the first game, then it got canceled. So, it’s not anything new. The only option we have is to control what we can control which is when they tell us we get to play the next game and move forward. The mental approach with the team has to be preparation and get ready for the next game. Can’t do anything about the Baylor game, it’s over with, so we just gotta move forward.”
So, moving forward; how does this team move forward? Oklahoma State moved up in the weekly rankings to No. 7 in the country. They’ve played well the past two weeks and it looks like they’ll likely continued their upward trend. This team is very junior and senior heavy with multiple starting on both the offense and defense. Coach Gundy is hoping to rely on the maturity of the upperclassmen to get the team focused on the task at hand: a good week of practice this week.
“We just try to keep the guys focused. They like to play games, that’s what they do, but we can’t play one this week. They’re mature enough to know that if we don’t have three good practices this week that you take a chance on not playing as good, even though I know the game’s not until next Saturday. Hopefully we’re mature enough to know we still have to practice good.”
