Through five games, sitting at 3-2 while breaking in a new defensive coordinator for the second straight season in Bryan Nardo, Oklahoma State's Mike Gundy shared at his presser yesterday leading up to their match up with Kansas that he feels like players are starting to buy into certain concepts, and as a staff they're starting to realize what their healthy players do well.
Coming off a nice win over reigning Big 12 champion Kansas State last weekend, Gundy was asked if getting back on track and having success helps with the buy in of their new schemes and concepts.
"Yes, in most cases," Gundy responded.
But that wasn't all, he also feels like their refusal to coach soft is paying off as well.
From the sounds of it, Gundy and his staff faced a crossroads following back-to back losses to South Alabama (33-7) and Iowa State (34-27). Would they lighten up on the reigns, or continue to coach their guys hard?
After those losses, Gundy told his team if they want to pout instead of put the work in, don't come to practice and if they felt sorry for themselves to go ahead and test the transfer portal.
"I did share this with you two weeks ago and last week, and I told the team this - I don't give a damn if we lost a game and if you want to pout about it, then don't come to practice, just stay home. Or go in the portal, I don't care."
"I only want guys that want to practice and compete and not feel sorry for themselves...and they responded. They bought into that."
The message was clear...they're going to continue to coach guys hard.
"So that helps, but when you do play well, it's easier to coach them harder. But we still chose to coach them hard after we lost games versus going the other way because I don't see any results with young people in society today if you're going to be soft on them, because then they're going to get even more soft than they already are. That's just my opinion."
Hear more from Gundy in the clip.