It was a rough day for the Pokes on the golf course.

After entering the final round of the NCAA Championships with a 13-stroke lead on the field, Oklahoma State enters the match play portion as the No. 2 seed after posting a team score of 12-over 292 in the final round. The Cowboys finished three strokes behind top-seeded Arizona State.

Place	Team	To Par	Total
1	Arizona State	-3	1,117
2	Oklahoma State	E	1,120
3	Pepperdine	+5	1,125
4	Oklahoma	+10	1,130
5	Illinois	+14	1,134
6	Florida State	+16	1,136
7	Vanderbilt	+24	1,144
8	North Carolina	+25	1,145

The Cowboys will start match play against Vanderbilt.

OSU freshman Bo Jin led the individual leaderboard after the second and third rounds but, like his team, Jin ran into troubles Monday. He finished second after shooting a 3-over 73 in the final round.

It was one stroke behind Clemson senior Turk Pettit. Pettit and Jin were tied throughout much of the day. Jin drove the par-4 green on hole 17 and looked to take the lead with a birdie, but he three-putted for par.

A wayward tee shot left him in some deep rough on 18 which he magically got out of and he avoided water on his second shot, setting up an up-and-down to force a playoff. But it wasn’t to be, as he left his chip short and two-putted for a bogey.

Jin has finished second or tied for second in his past three tournaments: Big 12s, the Stillwater Regional and now the NCAA Championships. That’s brutal, but quite a promising sign for the true freshman.

All class from our freshman.#okstate | #golfschool pic.twitter.com/IxwaZzWzIo

— OSU Cowboy Golf (@OSUCowboyGolf) June 1, 2021

Jin was one of three top 20 finishers for Oklahoma State, as Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra’s 1-under 279 was good to tie for eighth, and Austin Eckroat’s 3-over 283 tied him for 17th.

Place	Name	To Par	Total
2	Bo Jin	-6	274
T8	Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra	-1	279
T17	Austin Eckroat	+3	283
T44	Aman Gupta	+10	290
T54	Brian Stark	+12	292

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The Oklahoma legislature’s agreement last week to pass a measure related to Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) brought with it news days later that Oklahoma State has expanded its partnership with INFLCR — a brand ambassador company geared towards empowering players in their brand-building — to “bring the best tools in the fields of brand building and entrepreneurship to Oklahoma State student-athletes so they can remain on the cutting edge both on and off the field of play,” OSU Deputy Director of Athletics Chad Weiberg said in a statement.

The news comes as NIL legislation is taking hold across the country and as the NCAA slowly loosens its grip on the amateurism model. The movement is expected to eventually pave way for college athletes to make money off (you guessed it) their name, image and likeness. As it stands, they cannot profit off their brand. 

Yet Oklahoma’s position in the marketplace could be a boon for the long-term future of its universities and especially for Oklahoma State, which has been at the forefront of innovation. With this coming down the pike for years, the school over the last year has given players access to videos and photos of their own collection to help build brands on social media including Twitter and Instagram. OSU reports that the basketball team’s audience grew 24% on average since last September. 

Beyond the obvious explanation that OSU is seemingly ahead of the curve in comparison to competitors, there are three reasons why the school could benefit substantially from this new era of college athletics. The first is that OSU (and the state on the whole) has grasped the significance of the movement. Oklahoma is just the 17th school in the U.S. to sign NIL measures. That number is going to change in the coming months, but for now, it means that coaches are tooled with one heckuva recruiting ace in their pocket: Come to Oklahoma State, where you can actually make money unlike the schools from the other 33 states still dragging their feet. I can hear the Mullet Man now, with Barry’s Heisman in hand, already making that pitch to some top-200 running back from Katy, Texas. It’s undeniably an advantage.

The second reason is that OSU’s creative folks are amongst the best in the industry. Check this vid, for instance. Courtney and Andrew Bay at OSU were recently nominated for a Heartland Emmy on this video. This team puts out incredibly well-produced content on the regular. Just take a look at this or this or this and you’ll see why having them in your corner is huge. And yes, even if they’re OSU employees and not working for the players directly, they sure can put out some incredible stuff (like this or this) that benefits the players and the school.

Mind if we brag for a minute? Our video announcing the dawn of the #NewEra was nominated for a @HeartlandEmmy!#NewEra I #GoPokes pic.twitter.com/LU25vrPYmk

— OSU Cowboy Basketball (@OSUMBB) May 28, 2021

The final reason is that the playing field is now likely to even itself out more uniformly. At least to an extent. 

Can I tell you a secret? The truth is that Alabama is still going to sign the top player and the top class every year in football. Kentucky is still going to land five-star after five-star in basketball. And Syracuse is still going to keep raking in top lacrosse recruits while Harvard signs the top chess players (or whatever). They’ve all got the market cornered.

But will every Kentucky player get compensated like the top-10 caliber recruit does? No. The fifth-highest-ranked player in a class isn’t going to garner the same money in the market that the top-rated player in a class will. So let’s say (purely as an example) that top hoops recruit Emoni Bates gets a $500,000 check for endorsing a car dealership in Lexington, and that helps sway him to commit to Kentucky. (Bates is expected by many to skip college, so he’s an easy example.) That likely sets the market that the third-highest-ranked player in that same Kentucky class can make, what, $200,000 from the local Chick-Fil-A? 

That could lead the third-highest-ranked player in some instances to kick the tires elsewhere. If Bates is worth $500,000 at Kentucky as the No. 1, what happens if he wants to go to, say, Stillwater, America, and be the No. 1 guy? Maybe Hideaway wants to make him the star of the show and is willing to (deep) dish out more than what he’d make off his name, image and likeness elsewhere. Or heck, maybe he’s content going to Lexington and taking a lesser amount knowing the pub he’d get at Kentucky.

This is the beauty of a free market. The market can dictate value. It is also the beauty of what OSU has done with its partnership with INFLCR. Here’s more about that from OSU’s press release:

The INFLCR platform will also include a partnership with Navigate, which will provide Oklahoma State student-athletes with estimated fair market values and education to guide them through every facet of their NIL rights. Over the last 15 years, Navigate has provided valuation services across professional and collegiate athletics for over $4B in transactions.

[OSU Athletics]

This is a good thing. Estimating fair market values and educating players on that and other NIL rights is key to making sure this is done right. In most cases, the backup guard isn’t going to be worth the same as the four-star starting quarterback. That’s a duh. But understanding the value each player can attain in the market is a critical component given the newness of all this, and OSU being as armed as possible with information is in this environment a competitive advantage.

It will likely take months — heck, maybe years — before the market truly clarifies. And heck, NCAA-wide legislation may take just as long. I doubt it, but they don’t appear to be in a hurry.

But the state of Oklahoma — and Oklahoma State University — seems to be about as geared up for this moment as possible. In time, it’s likely to pay dividends for the state and for the school alike. So as amateurism fades away there is real, tangible money to be made for players as they go about their college experience. Investing time and money while learning about what that moment will be like will pay big down the road for OSU.

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We are on to Part 2 of the Spencer Sanders’ 2020 interception breakdown series. In this post we will cover the picks that I categorized as “The Bad”. As a reminder, we took a look at The Good (as an Interception Can Be) in Part 1. Now, the Part 2 interceptions fall a little bit more on Sanders shoulders, and I’ll break them down below.

Iowa State film

First up, we take a look at Sanders’ second interception against ISU.

OSU is in a 10 personnel set, with two wide receivers split to each side of the formation. At the snap, Sanders fakes the give to running back Chuba Hubbard and then looks to throw down the field. The wide receivers are running a four verts concept, meaning all four receivers are running deep routes down the field at the same time. The Cyclones only send three defenders on the pass rush, so Sanders has a nice, clean pocket to operate from.

Iowa State drops eight defenders into coverage, in what looks to be Cover 6. This pass coverage is a combination of Cover 2 and Cover 4. The defense will play Cover 2 on one half of the field and Cover 4 on the other. On this particular play, ISU is playing Cover 4 to the boundary, or short side of the field, and Cover 2 to the wide side of the field.

After Sanders makes his play fake to Hubbard, he keeps his eyes to the boundary side and never takes them off. With both the corner and the safety to that side dropping deep into zone coverage, Sanders has a tight window to fit his throw in. It looked as though he thought he could get enough zip on the throw to deliver the pass to his receiver before the safety rotated over to make a play.

Sanders starts off poorly by completely telegraphing this throw. In addition, the safety shaded to the boundary side should’ve alerted Sanders pre-snap that this was probably not the best option in the route concept. There are four defenders dropping into coverage on the short side of the field, giving him very little room to operate. The full video of the play can be found below.

Baylor tape

Next up, we have the first interception from last year’s matchup with Baylor.

The Cowboys are in an 11 personnel grouping. They have a Cowboy Back and running back in the backfield, two receivers to the field side, or wide side, and one receiver split into the boundary. After the snap, you can see the Cowboy back, offensive line and running back are all in pass protection. The wide receiver to the boundary is running a deep outward breaking route, the slot receiver to the field is running a quick out and the outside receiver on that side is running a deep inward breaking route.

Pre-snap, it looks as though Baylor might be in Cover 2, with two deep safeties each covering one deep half of the field. BU’s pre-snap look is shown in the image below.

However, just before the snap, the safety to the field side starts to roll down towards the line of scrimmage. In addition, Baylor’s #8 Jordan Pitre creeps inward towards the defensive linemen and ends up coming on a blitz off the edge.

Sanders feels some pressure with the blitz, and has to move around a bit in the pocket, but he does have enough time to get the throw off down field. The problem here though is that Sanders again eyeballs his target from when the ball touches his hands off the snap to when he delivers the football. This allow the single-high safety to cheat to the field side and get in the throwing lane to make a play. Sanders also doesn’t make a great throw, which doesn’t help the situation.

To Sanders’ credit though, he probably should’ve thrown the ball a little earlier, but had to side step Pitre on the blitz. In addition, outside receiver Dillon Stoner could’ve sat down on his route and found an open space in between the zone defenders. If BU would’ve stayed in their Cover 2 look, Stoner might have been able to turn this route into a skinny post and split the two safeties, but in Cover 3 his ran his route directly into the middle of the field defender.

With the BU pressure and coverage look, and it being first down in the middle of the field, Sanders should’ve looked off Stoner and fired the ball out to slot receiver Brennan Presley in the flat or moved out of the pocket and thrown the ball away. The full clip is shown below.

Baylor part dos

The last interception in this section is the second pick from the Baylor game.

Honestly, I didn’t know which section to put this one in. I think this could’ve gone into Part 1, and there’s not really a whole lot to say about this interception. The Cowboys are in 12 personnel, with a Cowboy Back split to the boundary and one in the H-Back position.

The Bears look to be in man coverage, which is what OSU wants as they are looking to get the ball to wide receiver Tay Martin split to the field side. Martin slightly delays his go route off the snap and then tries to speed by the defensive back. This play requires a three-step drop and throw from the QB, which you will see in the full video that Sanders has time to execute and does.

On this back shoulder throw, Sanders leaves the ball too far inside. This throw is also a little short, but the quarterback has to give his receiver a better chance by throwing the ball more to the outside. In addition, Martin could’ve done a better job of attacking the football. All that being said, it’s nice coverage and an overall good play made by the BU defensive back.

In the next post, we’ll take a look at The Ugly interceptions.

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The Cowboys are headed out west for some postseason baseball.

Oklahoma State got the two seed in Arizona’s NCAA Regional. The Wildcats are the No. 5 overall seed. Grand Canyon and UC Santa Barbara are the other two teams at the event.

The Cowboys start the regional against UC Santa Barbara at 3 p.m. Friday. It’s a double-elimination tournament format among the four teams with the winner advancing to a Super Regional series.

Arizona is 40-15 this year and are the Pac-12 champs. The Wildcats are good at the plate. They have eight players with at least 140 at-bats with a batting average above .300. Christian Encarnacion-Strand and Jake Thompson are the only Cowboys who can claim that.

UC Santa Barbara is 39-18 this season and finished second in the Big West. The Gauchos have won eight in a row entering the regional.

Grand Canyon is 39-19-1 this season and won the WAC tournament. OSU and Grand Canyon played a three-game series in March in Stillwater. The Cowboys won the first two games 11-5 and 3-0, respectively. The third game was tied at 9 after nine innings, but a travel curfew ended the game in a tie.

The Cowboys are 35-17-1 this season. OSU finished fourth in the Big 12 regular season before making it to the championship game at the conference tournament in Oklahoma City.

The Big 12 has three teams hosting regionals, as Texas, TCU and Texas Tech all got top eight seeds.

Here is a look at the entire bracket (OSU is in the bottom left).

Here's the full 2021 NCAA Division I Baseball Championship Bracket #okstate pic.twitter.com/MbRMS51KcE

— Dustin Ragusa (@DustRagu) May 31, 2021

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The Daily Bullets are brought to you by Hoboken Coffee: Get 20% off your first order.

Happy Memorial Day – and a sincere thank you to those who have served our great country.  

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Scores

Softball: Cowgirls 2, Texas 0
Baseball: TCU 10, Pokes 7
Men’s Golf: Pokes in first at -12

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OSU Bullets

• Cowgirl Softball is headed back to the College World Series

5⃣0⃣ seconds of pure bliss.#Pitch2Pitch | #GoPokes pic.twitter.com/kqipciPJbO

— OSU Cowgirl Softball (@CowgirlSB) May 30, 2021

• Coach Cal threw shade on the Pokes after Cade shunned him

• Pokes fall 10-7 to TCU in the Big 12 title game – ‘It sucks right now.’

• This interview Adam Lunt did with a Baylor site on Cowboy Football is great

• The Cowboys are running away with stroke play going into today’s final round

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Non-OSU Bullets

• Memorial Day cooking and yard game guides
• Seems like a solid move from 247 to streamline the rankings (taking away/changing categories)

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Bo Jin and the Cowboys are holding their leads after three days at the NCAA Championships.

Oklahoma State is the only team below par through three rounds with their 12-under 828. Oklahoma is in second at 1-over 841.

Place	Team	To Par	Total
1	Oklahoma State	-12	828
2	Oklahoma	+1	841
3	Arizona State	+2	842
4	Illinois	+4	844
5	Florida State	+9	849

It was a particularly good day for OSU junior Austin Eckroat. He shot a 3-under 67, a score tied for the second-best round of the day among all participants. The round moved Eckroat up 21 spots on the individual leaderboard, and he is now tied for 12th at the event at an even-par 210.

As good as Eckroat was Sunday, he is third among OSU golfers on the individual leaderboard through three rounds.

Bo Jin, a true freshman, has a two-stroke lead on the field entering the final round after scoring a 1-under 69 Sunday. He is 9-under for the tournament.

Sophomore Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra has had a sneaky good tournament thus far. He shot 2-under Sunday and is tied for eighth at 3-under for the tournament.

Place	Name	To Par	Total
1	Bo Jin	-9	201
T8	Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra	-3	207
T12	Austin Eckroat	E	210
T34	Brian Stark	+5	215
T41	Aman Gupta	+6	216

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Fourth-seeded Oklahoma State fell to 2-seed TCU 10-7 in the Phillips 66 Big 12 Tournament Championship. Their bats were lively, but it was a tough day on the mound for the Cowboys.

Six pitchers saw action for OSU, and the group allowed 10 earned runs, striking out 10. The Pokes turned in a combined 4.09 ERA.

Trevor Martin got the start from the mound and found himself in trouble early and often.

In the first, Martin walked TCU’s Porter Brown who stole second and third, and Brayden Taylor stole second to put two Horned Frogs in scoring position with just one out. Fortunately, Martin was able to strike out consecutive batters after falling behind 3-0 in the count each time.

In the second, Martin found himself facing loaded bases with one out, but this time he was not able to pitch his way out of the pickle. A Brown single up the middle sent two Horned Frogs across the dish and ended Martin’s day.

Noah Sifrit, who has mostly played in the outfield this season, emerged from the bullpen and threw just two pitches to get the two outs needed to stop the bleeding thanks to this double play.

Just like they drew it up!@12_Gold_22 @BrownMarcus12 @JakeT34#MakeitHappen #GoPokes pic.twitter.com/CeMUihnTxh

— OSU Cowboy Baseball (@OSUBaseball) May 30, 2021

OSU looked ready to blow this thing open in the third, scoring five runs on just two hits, all unearned.

The Cowboys loaded the bases in unconventional fashion. Matt Golda reached on a fielding error, Christian Encarnacion-Strand was hit by a pitch and Jake Thompson was walked.

With two outs, Carson McCusker dinged one toward second base, but what should have been an easy out turned into two runs scoring on yet another fielding error.

Then Cade Cabiness hit his eighth home run of the year to pile on three more runs.

"Just like that it's 5-2"

@CCabbiness16 gives the Cowboys the lead in the third #MakeitHappen #GoPokes pic.twitter.com/sq6L2wYsJh

— OSU Cowboy Baseball (@OSUBaseball) May 30, 2021

But TCU roared back in the bottom of the third when Phillip Sikes sent one over the wall to pull back within a run. Then Brayden Taylor hit a sac fly to knot things up at 5.

In the bottom of the fifth, Colton Bowman found himself in a mess in his first inning on the bump, after a walk and two singles loaded the bases with just one out. Enter Brown.

Brown has been the Frogs’ hottest hitter in OKC this week, and he didn’t disappoint. He hit a bases-clearing double to put TCU up 8-5 and relieve the Cowboys’ reliever of his duties and necessitate the third pitching change for the Pokes.

The Frogs’ lead-off man got on base in each of the first seven innings, and they’re one of the most dangerous teams in the nation when they hit the bag. TCU tied a Big 12 Tournament record with seven stolen bases, six of which happened in the first two innings.

Caeden Trenkle gave the Cowboys some life with a home run in the seventh, and the Pokes scored again in the eighth on a Matt Golda single RBI, but it was too little, too late.

The Cowboys await Monday’s selection show at 11 a.m. to see where they’re headed for the regional round of the NCAA Tournament. OSU was projected as a 2 seed prior to the Big 12 Tournament. The Cowboys’ strong performance at the event has likely solidified that.

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STILLWATER — For the first time this century, the Cowgirls are headed to consecutive Women’s College World Series.

Oklahoma State beat Texas 2-0 on Sunday in Game 3 of the teams’ Super Regional in Cowgirl Stadium, and the Cowgirls did so off another stellar outing from their Ace.

Carrie Eberle threw her sixth seven-inning shutout of the year as she allowed four hits, walked one and struck out three. After spending the first three seasons of her career at Virginia Tech, Eberle, an All-American and Big 12 Pitcher of the Year, is headed to her first Women’s College World Series.

Waving hasn’t worked particularly well for the Longhorns. After UT catcher Mary Iakopo waved a Cowgirl baserunner off the field after throwing her out in the Big 12 Tournament, Iakopo had an error at the end of the game that gave the Cowgirls the win.

UT pitcher Shea O’Leary dealt for much of Sunday’s game, she gave a wave after the fourth inning as she trotted to the dugout, and then she ran into some trouble in the fifth.

O’Leary hit Sydney Pennington and Karli Petty with pitches to start the fifth inning. After Reagan Wright put down a sac bunt to move the two runners into scoring position, freshman Avery Hobson chopped a ball up the middle to score the game’s first run.

Hobson was caught trying to steal second. With two outs and Petty on third, Chelsea Alexander put down a beautiful bunt and legged it out to score Petty in what would be the game’s final run.

The runs were the first two of the Super Regional OSU had scored without hitting a home run. The Cowgirls did hit a pair of would-be home runs that came just foul of the left-field foul pole.

It’s the ninth time in program history the Cowgirls have qualified for the WCWS. OSU last went in 2019 (the last time it was played), where the Cowgirls went 1-2.

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The Cowboys could have consecutive individual national champions.

Oklahoma State freshman Bo Jin leads the field through two rounds at the NCAA Championships in Arizona. Matthew Wolff won the tournament the last time it took place, in 2019. Jin would be the 10th individual champ in OSU history should he hold onto his lead.

Jin has contributed to the Cowboys opening up a five-stroke lead in the stroke-play portion of the tournament with a team score of 6-under 554. Oklahoma sits in second at 1-under.

Place	Team	To Par	Total
1	Oklahoma State	-6	554
2	Oklahoma	-1	559
3	Arizona State	+2	562
4	Pepperdine	+5	565
T5	Illinois	+6	566
T5	North Carolina	+6	566

Jin carded a 3-under 67 in Friday’s first round before besting that by two strokes on Saturday. Saturday saw Jin birdie holes 16, 17 and 18 to close out his round, three of seven birdies he tallied on the day. That brings his two round total to an 8-under 132, three strokes up on the field.

His 65 was the lowest score an OSU golfer has carded at the NCAA Championships since Charles Howell’s 63 in 2000, when Howell won the individual championship and OSU won as a team.

Jin hasn’t won a collegiate tournament this early in his career, but he has been on the cusp, especially lately. He finished second in his past two outings, tying for second in the Big 12 Championships and standing alone in second at the NCAA Regional at Karsten Creek.

Here where the Cowboys sit individually heading into Sunday’s third round.

Place	Name	To Par	Total
1	Bo Jin	-8	132
T11	Eugenio Lopez-Chacarra	-1	139
T19	Brian Stark	+1	141
T33	Austin Eckroat	+3	143
T71	Aman Gupta	+6	146

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