After losing to Bedlam rival Oklahoma, 16-34, on a blustery wind-swept Saturday night in Stillwater, the Oklahoma State Cowboys will find out this weekend where they will be headed for a bowl and who they will play.

ESPN.com is projecting that Oklahoma State (8-4 overall, 5-4 in the Big 12) will face Notre Dame in the Camping World Bowl in Orlando, Florida on December 28.

That would be marquee matchup.

The Cowboys tried to match the No. 6 Sooners but it was difficult without their starting quarterback Spencer Sanders and without Tylan Wallace – arguably the best wide receiver in the nation.

The offense sputtered at times behind quarterback Dru Brown.

“What this game comes down to is, you can’t kick field goals and beat a good football team,” said OSU coach Mike Gundy. “We got down inside the 15-yard line several times and kicked field goals. We put ourselves in a jam and could never get over the hump. We didn’t do a very good job against the rush. The guard/tackle pull play gave us a lot of issues. We weren’t very effective against the rush. We turned one over. I know there were two, but the last one was just a desperation fourth down. We lost the turnover battle.

“ In the end it’s simple, you can’t kick field goals and beat a good team like that. It’s tough to keep up with an offense like them, and they were effective rushing the football. That’s the way it comes out.”

It was obvious that OU was keeping a close watch on OSU running back Chuba Hubbard – the nation’s leading rusher.

“They were putting safeties down in there, and that’s why we were trying to throw it,” Gundy said. “We got some pass interference and holding calls and got some calls over. They made the adjustment to drop the safeties down and what happened was, with us not keeping it within a one score game, it allowed them some more flexibility on defense. There’s kind of a big picture to it. They started by playing somewhat normally, then Chuba was hurting them. So they dropped down, and we started throwing. Then we got into a multi-score game and allowed them to be aggressive up front with twists and things like that. We almost became one dimensional.”

Hubbard entered the game leading the nation in rushing yards and rushing yards per game. He added 104 rushing yards to bring his season total to 1,936.

“Our guys had a lot of fight,” said Hubbard. “We always do. We made too many mistakes. I’m not taking anything away from Oklahoma, they played a great game, balled out and did everything right, which paid off for them. We just need to build off of this. It’s obviously a tough loss, but we can’t hang onto it for too long.

“Everyone saw that we were 4-3 at one point in the season and everyone gave up on us, but we just kept fighting. Obviously we didn’t come up with this one, but we aren’t done yet.”