Week two brought a little of everything for the Big 12: a few statement wins, a few ugly misses, and more than enough chaos to reshuffle the league’s early-season stock report.
The conference’s biggest movers came in the games that mattered most against power opponents. Oklahoma State, Utah and BYU all came out looking better for it.
UCF, meanwhile, walked away with the kind of loss that can linger. Kansas also let one slip, and Texas Tech’s win came with enough warning signs to keep it in the middle for now.
Oklahoma State was the biggest surprise of the weekend. After a 90-minute lightning delay, Drew Mestemaker broke loose for a 75-yard run on the Cowboys’ first offensive snap, and from there the game tilted hard in their favor.
The result was not just a win, but control from start to finish. Head coach Eric Morris said afterward that he liked how his players responded in practice that week, and this was one of those rare times when that kind of buildup actually showed up on game day.
Utah also delivered in a big way. A lot of people around the SEC, including Arkansas fans, seemed to think a trip to Salt Lake City would be manageable.
Instead, the Utes buried the Razorbacks with a 22-point second quarter and never let the game swing back. Of the three Big 12-SEC matchups, this was the only one the league won, and Utah made sure it wasn’t close.
BYU did its part too, opening Big 12 play with a steady 28-17 win over Arizona. The Cougars scored a touchdown in every quarter, kept applying pressure and gradually pulled away.
Arizona came in trying to make a point, and for most of the afternoon it played like it. But BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier - who our Pete Mundo believes is the best quarterback in the conference - answered with a performance that suggested he might be that dude.
UCF is headed in the opposite direction. The Knights went to Pitt with a chance to make a statement and instead got dragged into a low-scoring game that looked better on paper than it played out.
Pitt led 12-0, UCF didn’t score until the fourth quarter, and the Knights’ run game never found much of a rhythm. To make matters worse, UCF will be without quarterback Alonza Barnett III for a few weeks because of a hamstring injury, per the Orlando Sentinel’s Matt Murschel.
That makes the road to a winning season much steeper.
Kansas also came up short after hanging around for three quarters in a 38-21 loss to Missouri. Isaiah Marshall had a rough day throwing the ball, finishing 13-for-30 with two interceptions, and the ground game couldn’t provide much support.
Eventually, the defense wore down and the Jayhawks let a chance to knock off a Top 25 team slip away. And no, the pregame hype video did not help.
Texas Tech belongs in the hold category after a 35-24 win at Oregon State. The Red Raiders got the job done, but the defense gave up 413 passing yards, which is not what Joey McGuire and his staff want to see.
The offense did enough to balance things out and carry Tech through. There are still plenty of moving parts there - a new starting quarterback, new pieces on defense, new talent on offense and the pressure that comes with being the defending champion.
Even so, Texas Tech still looks like a real title contender. Friday night should tell us a little more.
The TV situation around the Oklahoma State-Oregon game was its own mess. ESPN had its hands full with the Houston-Oregon State game, then had to juggle the women’s singles championship at the U.S.
Open as well. Add in the lightning delay in Stillwater, and viewers ended up stuck with Skycam, no score bug and very few replays at one point.
The network has to do better than that.
In Other News...
Oklahoma State Just Turned One Ugly Loss Into A Huge Debate
A week after a frustrating loss to Tulsa, Oklahoma State had to answer a bigger question against No. 6 Oregon, and the response was the kind that changes the tone around a program fast. The Cowboys rallied for a 39-31 upset and did it with a mix of belief and backbone, leaning on quarterback Drew Mestemaker, solid play up front on both sides and a receiver room that had been talking before kickoff about what this group thought it could be.
Wyatt Young was among the players projecting confidence ahead of the game, and Oklahoma State's performance gave that confidence some real weight. The win also put a spotlight on Eric Morris, who was recognized with the Dodd Trophy Coach of the Week award, while the larger debate now turns to what this result says about a team that had just looked beatable seven days earlier and suddenly looks a lot more dangerous. [Read more 🡒]
Oklahoma State's Oregon Upset Looks Even Better After What Cowboys Spotted
Oklahoma States upset of Oregon already stood out as one of the more intriguing wins on the schedule, and the postgame details have only made it look smarter in hindsight. The Cowboys defense was able to lean on a small but meaningful edge after noticing something in quarterback Dante Moores pre-snap behavior, the kind of tell that can tilt a possession when a game is tight and every snap matters.
Moore acknowledged afterward that his own tendencies were part of the picture and said he was willing to clean them up, while Oregons offensive coordinator said the issue has since been addressed. There is also the familiar chess-match layer every staff knows by heart, because what looks like a habit to one side can sometimes be turned into a weapon by the other, which is why this matchup now feels even more like a case of Oklahoma States defense seeing the field a step ahead. [Read more 🡒]
Oklahoma State Fans Should Watch What Eric Morris Builds Next
The Athletics latest look at how power-conference schools are spending on football rosters offered another reminder that roster construction has become as important as Xs and Os. For Oklahoma State, the backdrop is a program adjusting to coaching changes and the realities of NIL and the transfer portal, while trying to stay competitive in a Big 12 landscape where every school is making hard choices about where to put its money.
Eric Morris is approaching the rebuild with a broad plan, one that blends roster additions, recruiting and player development. It is a different kind of team-building than the old model, and it comes at a moment when the Cowboys are trying to define how they want to operate moving forward. What makes it worth watching is how that approach unfolds after so much of last years roster moved on, and whether this version of Oklahoma State can piece itself together quickly enough to keep pace. [Read more 🡒]