Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy called the 37-35 comeback win over No. 5 Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl January 1 the “biggest win in the history of the school.”

“This is clearly the biggest win in the history of the school,” Gundy said. “You’re in a New Year’s Day bowl. You’re playing Notre Dame. Biggest comeback in the school history. … The biggest win in the history of the school.”

Down 7-28 in the second quarter, the Cowboys rallied and outscored the Fighting Irish 30-7 the rest of the way. It was the biggest comeback in school history. (OSU beat Colorado after being down 20 points in 1979.)

It was also the first season that Gundy, a former quarterback at OSU in his 17th season as head coach, won 12 games in a season. In 2011, Gundy and the Cowboys won the Fiesta Bowl and ended the season ranked No. 3. Final rankings won’t be available until next week.

OSU beat both Oklahoma and Texas this season and narrowly lost to Baylor in the Big 12 Championship. The Cowboys were literally six inches from a last-minute score that might have pushed them into the College Football Playoff.

“We feel like if we didn’t win this game, this would be kind of a season of just forgotten greatness,” OSU defensive end Brock Martin said. “The Fiesta Bowl, all that greatness and the great things you did as a unit, the D-line and linebackers and DBs, we kind of felt like it would be forgotten over time.”

OSU quarterback Spencer Sanders had 371 yards passing and four touchdowns. He rushed 17 times for 125 yards. Sanders and former Clemson quarterback Tajh Boyd are the only major college players to have 350 yards passing, more than 100 yards rushing and four touchdowns in a bowl game.

A key to the success this season was the experience of players who took advantage of an extra year of eligibility due to the Chinese coronarvirus pandemic.

That gave Gundy faith that they could come back in the bowl game.

“They’re veterans,” Gundy said of his players. “They’ve been in this program, most of them — particularly on defense — been in the program four, five, six years. For that reason, I didn’t have any concerns. I was just hoping that we could hold up with the length they had on both sides of the ball up front.”

It was the first game for Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman, who was hired Dec. 3 after being defensive coordinator when former coach Brian Kelly bolted for LSU. The Irish are now 0-8 in BCS or New Year’s Six bowls, the most losses by any team without a win. Their most recent win in a New Year’s bowl game was the 1994 Cotton Bowl.

“They did a good job of getting into some 10 personnel, which they really hadn’t shown much all year and it was good. They made some good second half adjustments offensively and defensively to stop what we were doing offensively and to kind of exploit some things defensively. They did a good job and you gotta give them credit where credit’s due,” Freeman said.

Freeman didn’t adjust well to OSU’s hurry-up offense.

“We knew they were going to go fast and they did. We prepared for it,” Freeman said. “But at the end of the day, they still executed a little bit better than we did defensively. We wanted to play some zone early in the game and they were starting to exploit some of that zone. So we said, okay, let’s change and play a little bit more man.”

Sanders gave Notre Dame trouble with his running.

“You started to see him run some quarterback draws. All of the sudden you get pass-rush and then the quarterback scrambles up the middle,” Freeman said. “We’re gonna tell our defenders, hey, don’t rush past the quarterback. It’s a chess match. We want to get pass-rush, but we also don’t want the quarterback to scramble right up the middle of our defense. They did a good job of mix it up. They did a good job of getting the ball out of the quarterback’s hand and so that could slow down your pass rush. Your pass rush is non existent if they can get the ball out of his hand so fast. They did a good job. Again, kudos to them. We got to look at how we can fix some things and make sure we’re better prepared.”

Now Gundy must replace former defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, who was hired by Ohio State.

“I promised my wife that I would take at least one day off,” Gundy said.

“But then I have to start doing some work. I need to go back and look at this (Fiesta Bowl) tape. I need to evaluate our staff. And then think through what’s the best direction to go with that position, because coordinator positions are huge hires with me as a head coach, because I don’t coach defense. I don’t really coach offense, either. I’m willing to let them do their job. So that person has to be able to control that room, has to be highly intelligent and has to be very savvy and quick-thinking on gameday, in my opinion.”