Arkansas Coach Sam Pittman Discusses OSU Game

Arkansas head coach Sam Pittman's press conference previewing Oklahoma State.

"We're excited to go to Stillwater and play Oklahoma State. I have a ton of respect for Coach Gundy, I mean going into 20 years now at Oklahoma State University. He's just done a phenomenal job."

On Stopping the OSU Offense

"If you press them, they're going to test you. I mean, that's just what's going to happen. If you press them up, you're going to get tested deep. They have so many things they can do with the RPO, with handing it off to Gordon and then their bubble game, their screen game is a big part of what they do. They didn't do it as much Saturday as what I think they — well, what I know they've done in the past, but if you press them, they're going to go deep on you. If you don't, you're going to have the bubble or hand the ball off because normally you're in a box that's, number-wise, is going to give them an advantage handing the ball off to Gordon."

Playing at Boone Pickens Stadium

"We went in there and got beat when I was at OU. Very, very loud. Very, very close — as in, they can stand up and look right on top of you. We talked to our players and coaching staff about that as well, because we can't let their fans be a distraction to us when we're trying to learn on the sideline or trying to talk about the next series or whatever it may be. But it's extremely close. I think it's the closest one in the country. Extremely loud. I think they have 55,000, but it's a loud stadium, so we've talked about that. Crowd noise will be a huge part of this week's preparation and we started that on Saturday."

Ollie Gordon

"Well, our tackling is something that we needed to get better just from our Thursday night game. On Saturday we had a tacking circuit, so we're trying to address that. If they get him 2 or 3 yards, he's going to get 6 or 7 or more. We're going to have to tackle him one-on-one, but we're going to have to get a lot of guys around the ball. We definitely understand how good he is and the other thing, too, is they have some dynamic skill (players) that are difficult to get on the ground as well. So our tackling is going to have to be better. We're making a big emphasis on that this week."