Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy had high praise for Texas A&M, a team that won only two more games than they lost this season.
OSU faces A&M in the Texas Bowl with a kickoff set for 5:45 p.m. on Dec. 27 at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas.
“I think they are the best 7-5 team in the history of the NCAA in my opinion,” Gundy said. “They have lost to No. 1, they have lost to No. 1, they have lost to No. 1, they lost to No. 4, and they lost to No. 2. That’s their five losses. They are definitely a top 20 team.”
Texas A&M lost to then-No. 1 Clemson 24-10.
The Aggies lost to then-No. 8 Auburn 28-20.
They lost to then-No. 1 Alabama 47-28. They lost to then-No. 4 Georgia 19-13 and No. 2 LSU 50-7.
That’s arguably the toughest schedule in the country.
On the other hand, Texas A&M didn’t beat a ranked team this season. They had a narrow loss against Georgia in their next-to-last game but then got blown out by LSU.
Also, OSU played only one Top 10 team – No. 4 Oklahoma – and lost that game, 34-16, in Stillwater.
“I watched them on TV a couple of times,” Gundy said about the Aggies. “I know that they are very athletic. I know that their quarterback, he’s a third-rated quarterback in the SEC, only behind the Heisman Trophy winner (Joe Burrow of LSU) and behind Tua. So it will be a great challenge for us.
“We’ll have to have great preparation and we’ll have to play a very good game against a very, very good team.”
This is the second year for Texas A&M under highly paid coach Jimbo Fisher.
When Fisher was head coach at Florida State, he beat OSU 37-31 in the 2014 season opener at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. OSU was a heavy underdog. Cowboy quarterback J.W. Walsh and running back Tyreek Hill (now with the Kansas City Chiefs) kept the game close.
“It was a shootout, just a heck of a game,” Fisher said. “It came down to the last possession.”
Texas A&M is making their third appearance in the Texas Bowl in the last nine years.
They will face the nation’s leading running back in Cowboy Chuba Hubbard. Hubbard has rushed for 1,936 yards and 21 touchdowns this season.
“He’s a complete back,” Fisher said. “He will be a huge challenge for our defense.”
Hubbard, who surprisingly wasn’t a Heisman Trophy finalist, earned a spot on the 2019 Walter Camp All-America first team. This marks the third straight year and the fourth out of five that an Oklahoma State player has earned Walter Camp All-America accolades.
Hubbard is the first Cowboy running back to secure Walter Camp All-America honors since Kendall Hunter in 2010 and is the sixth OSU running back to earn the honor, joining Bob Fenimore (1945), Terry Miller (1977), Ernest Anderson (1982), Barry Sanders (1988) and Hunter.
A native of Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada, Hubbard was voted as Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year by the league’s coaches. He leads the Football Bowl Subdivision in nearly every statistical rushing category, including rushing yards, rushing yards per game, all-purpose yards, all-purpose yards per game, yards after contact (via Pro Football Focus) and more. His average of 161.3 yards per game is 14.5 yards per game better than second-place Jonathan Taylor of Wisconsin.
His 1,936 rushing yards are the second-most in a single season at Oklahoma State and the most since Sanders’ NCAA-record total of 2,850 yards in 1988.
Should he finish as the FBS rushing champion, he’d become the fifth Oklahoma State player to accomplish that feat, joining Fenimore (1945), Anderson (1982), Sanders (1988) and Gerald Hudson (1990).
Hubbard is on pace to finish with 2,097 rushing yards, which would rank 18th in FBS history and third in Big 12 Conference history.
Since 2000, only seven Power Five conference players have rushed for more than 2,100 yards in a season and done so averaging more than Hubbard’s current mark of 161.3 yards per game.