It was a lousy week for Oklahoma State, and it didn’t look any better at halftime Saturday in College Station, Texas.
Earlier in the week, the wife of Glenn Spencer, OSU’s beloved linebackers coach, died. He spent the week mourning, away from his team.
Then the Cowboys fell behind Texas A&M 20-3 at halftime. But as the players entered the locker room, they saw an odd thing. Spencer, who shares coordinator duties with Bill Young, was next to a board with the defensive adjustments they had to make.
Oklahoma State, which had given up 147 yards rushing, 154 yards passing and 7.5 yards per play in the first half, rallied to win 30-29, holding the Aggies to 15 yards rushing and forcing four turnovers in the second half.
“That’s big,” cornerback Justin Gilbert told reporters after the game. “For him to go through what he went through this week, to come on the road and stay in tune with us . . .”
Glenn’s wife, Angela Spencer, struggled with heart disease and had a heart transplant in February 2010. She died Sept. 18 at age 46.
Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy told Glenn Spencer to take as much time off as he needed. He went to Georgia for Thursday’s funeral but was back with the team by game time.
Mountain West bottoms out.
Right when Colorado State and Wyoming seem to be making strides, the bottom of the Mountain West falls out. UNLV and New Mexico are dreadful.
UNLV’s Caleb Herring threw three interceptions for touchdowns in a 41-16 loss to Southern Utah, an FCS school up the road in Cedar City, Utah. UNLV’s lone TD came on a fake field goal.
“This is all-time bad,” said coach Bobby Hauck, 3-14 in his second year. “Not to take anything away from (Southern Utah), but we’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror, starting with the head coach. This can’t happen. Can’t happen. For everybody in that locker room, it’s an all-time personal low in terms of football.”
The conference’s hottest seat finally blew up under New Mexico’s Mike Locksley, who was fired Sunday after a 48-45 overtime loss to Sam Houston State, another minor-league outfit.
Before 16,313 fans, New Mexico’s smallest crowd in 19 years, Locksley dropped to 2-26 after Saturday’s loss.
Big East refs blew it.
A requirement for college officials should be the ability to see an eye chart the approximate size of the big screen in Cowboys Stadium. That likely would rule out the Big East officiating crew who botched Toledo’s 33-30 overtime loss at Syracuse.
The refs incorrectly ruled Ross Krautman’s extra point was good, giving Syracuse a 30-27 lead with 2:07 left. Somehow, the replay official didn’t see the ball got outside the upright.
A Toledo field goal tied it on the last play of regulation, and Krautman kicked the overtime winner. The Big East admitted the error after the game.
“When you come into these games, as we’ve learned as a team and a coaching staff, it’s us against the world,” Toledo coach Tim Beckman said.
Cal fades this time.
California tried the same fade route to Keenan Allen that beat Colorado in overtime. This time his half-brother, Zach Maynard, with fourth-and- goal at the 2, went to the left side with the fade and badly overthrew him. Washington won 31-23.
Maynard then told reporters the winning pass at Colorado “wasn’t even a great ball. It was kind of behind him. He just made a play on it. If I’d done the same thing (Saturday), we’d still be on the field right now. I should have thrown him a lollipop ball to see if he could make a play on it.”
Footnotes.
Oregon State is 0-3 for the first time in coach Mike Riley’s 11 years and the first time since going 2-9 in 1996. . . . An NFL scout told The Arizona Republic that Arizona State has a dozen pro prospects. . . . Have you checked out Robert Griffin III’s stats at Baylor? Eye-popping: 70-of-82 (.854), 962 yards, 13 TDs, no interceptions, 236.2 quarterback rating. . . . Colorado strengthened its stranglehold on the worst kickoff return average in the country at 13.9.
