Oct. 30—MANHATTAN, Kan. — The stage was set for Oklahoma State.

A win over Kansas State on Saturday afternoon would’ve given the Cowboys sole possession of second place in the Big 12 Conference. It would’ve kept OSU in the upper echelon of college football. It would’ve served as a second win over a ranked opponent in as many weeks.

And then the Pokes proceeded to turn in perhaps the worst performance of the Mike Gundy era, as the No. 22 Wildcats routed the No. 9 Cowboys 48-0 at Bill Snyder Family Stadium.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start. We didn’t slow ‘em down on defense. Couldn’t score on offense,” Gundy said in the aftermath of the loss. “We just — we didn’t play good. We weren’t prepared. You saw a team that wasn’t prepared. And that’s what we get.”

OSU (6-2, 3-2 Big 12) was shut out for the first time since Nov. 28, 2009, when the Cowboys were handed a 27-0 loss by rival Oklahoma. And the 48-point defeat marks the worst loss under Gundy, whose biggest loss at the helm of the program was 62-23 to Texas A&M in 2005.

That, of course, became the secondlargest loss after the Cowboys’ latest trip to the Sunflower State.

“Sometimes things go your way, sometimes they don’t,” Gundy said. “The good news is, it only counts as one loss. ... We got our butt kicked today. We got outcoached, and they made more plays than us.”

The Cowboys, while preparing to play against multiple quarterbacks, expected to face KSU quarterback Adrian Martinez, who was injured during a Week 7 loss to TCU, and who Wildcats coach Chris Klien said was a game-time decision leading up to kickoff.

Instead, K-State started junior Will Howard, and it didn’t take long for the Wildcats (6-2, 4-1 Big 12) to show it didn’t matter who was leading their offense.

After receiving the opening kickoff, Howard led KSU 77 yards in nine plays for a touchdown. The Wildcats elected to be aggressive and go for a fourthand-10 from the OSU 38, a gamble that paid off when Howard connected with wideout Kade Warner for the 38-yard score.

That was the beginning of the end for the Cowboys, who allowed the Wildcats to reach the end zone on five of their seven drives in the first half. In stark contrast, the closest OSU got to the end zone was the K-State 18-yard line, where the drive was halted by a fumble from wideout Brennan Presley.

“Early, we just didn’t make some plays out of the gate and got behind,” Cowboys offensive coordinator Kasey Dunn said. “We could just never get a rhythm. It just seemed like every time we were in a rhythm, something weird would happen. ... Once those things start to spiral like that, bad things happen toward the end.”

The Cowboys offense was completely stymied by K-State. They entered the contest with the third-best scoring offense in the country at 44.7 points per game, and they were owners of the 24th-best offense in FBS by averaging 466.9 yards.

But against the Wildcats, the Pokes mustered a season-low 217 yards of offense. And it didn’t help that OSU was without wideouts Jaden Bray and Braydon Johnson for a second week in a row, or that they didn’t have starting running back Dominic Richardson, who didn’t play during the second half of the Week 7 win over Texas.

The ability, or lack thereof, to run the ball against K-State, coupled with the double-digit deficit from the jump, made the Cowboys one-dimensional. It was the same thing that led to their Week 6 loss to TCU, though the 43-40 overtime defeat from the Horned Frogs drastically differed from Saturday afternoon.

“I’d love to sit here and say that we have some magic potion or something, or that I know all the answers to why we didn’t play well today. I don’t,” Dunn said. “But I know this: This was a big ass game today, and we didn’t deliver on it.

“But we’re also in a position to be in a big ass game, and I don’t want our guys to lose sight of that. I mean, damn, we’re 6-2. ... Bad game.”

As much as the offense struggled, the defense did, too.

The Wildcats put up 496 yards of offense, good enough for their secondhighest total of the season. Their best, a 509-yard outing, coincidentally came during a 41-34 win over Oklahoma in Week 4.

OSU’s defense gave up the most points it had all season, surpassing its average of 28.7 per game, and surpassing the previous high of 44 that the Cowboys gave up during their 58-44 win over Central Michigan on Sept. 1.

Howard shredded the Pokes, going 21 of 37 (56.7 percent) for 296 yards passing and four touchdowns.

Wildcats running back Deuce Vaughn flipped the script on his performance during OSU’s win over K-State in 2021. Last fall, the Cowboys stifled Vaughn to the tune of 13 carries for 22 yards. In Week 8, he carried the ball 22 times for 158 yards and a touchdown, with the score coming on a 62-yard run in the first quarter.

To make matter worse for the Cowboys, who traveled to Manhhattan tattered, senior quarterback Spencer Sanders left in the fourth quarter after taking a big hit from behind while running the ball.

Sanders had been banged up since OSU’s Week 5 win over Texas Tech, and he had gotten progressively better since then. But in that moment, Gundy never considered pulling out No. 3.

“Spencer wanted to compete and wanted to play,” Gundy said. “He has the right to do that, so until then, we let him fight.”

The blowout, Gundy said, correlates with something he changed in practice during the week leading up to the Cowboys’ meeting with the Wildcats. With an abundance of players injured, he decided to take a different approach.

“I learned and made a mistake,” Gundy said. “I certainly thought it was the best thing to do or I wouldn’t have done it. But, obviously, sometimes I’m not always right.”

While he chalked it up to the altered week of preparation, Gundy couldn’t quite pinpoint where exactly things went wrong in the aftermath of the loss. It was something he didn’t feel comfortable doing with so much going wrong against the Wildcats.

But he knows something has to change — whether it be to the status quo or not.

The Cowboys don’t have long before they’re back on the road for a Week 9 trip to face Kansas in Lawrence, and if they don’t want to follow up this loss with one of equal abhorrence, they’ll need to return to Stillwater and get to work — fast.

“We don’t have any time to waste,” Gundy said. “I’ve had my butt kicked before. Not any fun, but we know how to fight back, and we will.”