FRISCO — Eric Morris, who grew up in Shallowater and now works in Stillwater, Oklahoma, finds himself in deep water in his first year as a head coach in the Big 12. One of the first orders of business with the team he’s taking over is to end a 19-game conference losing streak.
It’s a very different Oklahoma State than the teams Morris faced when he was a player from 2004-08 at Texas Tech. The Cowboys posted winning records 21 times in 22 seasons from 2002 through 2023, but they’ve gone 0-9 in conference play two years in a row.
“Oklahoma State was so good in my memories,” Morris said on Tuesday, July 7, day one of Big 12 media days. “I remember going to Boone Pickens (Stadium), how rowdy it was — the paddles slapping against the wall, the student section on fire. My memories are always good.”
When Morris was playing for Tech, he twice beat the Red Raiders in Stillwater: 24-17 in 2005 and 49-45 in 2007.
The Cowboys have made few good memories on the football field during the past two seasons, going 3-9 in 2024 and 1-11 last year.
“Now, when I got there,” Morris said from the stage at The Star, “I had to sit back and realize that there have been kids that are in this program that have been there for two years that hadn’t had the experience of walking in that locker room after winning a conference game.
“That was something really unique for me, because my memories were great, and then I had to realize a bunch of our players’ memories haven’t been great in the recent past.”
In 2021, Morris went 10-3 in his third year as head coach at Incarnate Word. Last year, he went 11-2 in his third year as head coach at North Texas. The building jobs he achieved at those two places improved his overall record to 46-34 and positioned him to succeed longtime coach Mike Gundy.
Morris has revamped the OSU roster. He’ll have 87 newcomers when the Cowboys open preseason practice. Among them are quarterback Drew Mestemaker, running back Caleb Hawkins and wide receiver Wyatt Young, key cogs on last year’s UNT team who followed Morris to Stillwater. In all, 21 OSU players previously played at UNT.
Mestamaker, who threw for 4,379 yards and 34 touchdowns last year, was voted Big 12 preseason newcomer of the year by media attending media days and named to the USA TODAY Sports Network All-Big 12 team. Young caught 70 passes for 1,264 yards and 10 touchdowns, and Hawkins rushed for 1,434 yards and 25 TDs.
They’ll try to wash away the recent culture of losing. Morris said it helps that he imported his operation from UNT.
“Obviously, me bringing a lot of my staff with me was huge,” he said. “We have 42 new guys in our operations staff-wise, and 35 of those came with me, so they knew what I expected. They knew the standard. They knew the Xs and Os. All of our position coaches came, so I wasn’t worried about that as much as formulating and getting these guys to believe in themselves in the locker room, and so we spent a ton of time breeding confidence in these guys.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Eric Morris has hands full with Oklahoma State football rebuild
Reporting by Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal | USA TODAY Network
