Seales, Sanders help No. 21 Oklahoma St. beat SE Louisiana
STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy began resting many of his starters in the second quarter.
It was that kind of day for the Cowboys. Jhajuan Seales caught two touchdown passes, helping No. 21 Oklahoma State roll past Southeastern Louisiana 61-7 on Saturday.
''That was a good day for us, and I thought we played fairly well,'' Gundy said. ''We were able to get a lot of players some quality work.''
Barry J. Sanders had 76 all-purpose yards and scored a touchdown. Sanders, whose father, Barry, won the Heisman Trophy for Oklahoma State in 1988, is a graduate transfer who played for Stanford last season. The younger Sanders scored on a 1-yard run in the first quarter and nearly scored again later in the quarter. He was stopped at the 1 after weaving through the Lions for a 57-yard punt return.
''It was pretty neat,'' said Gundy, who was the quarterback for Sanders' dad. ''We all thought about him (Barry J. Sanders) making plays, and he was tremendous. There is a lot of pressure on him, unjustified, but that's the world we live in.''
Mason Rudolph completed 18 of 26 passes for 188 yards and two touchdowns for the Cowboys. Seales finished with three catches for 61 yards in the opener for both teams.
Kaelyn Henderson ran 13 times for 68 yards and a touchdown for Southeastern Louisiana.
Madre Harper, a freshman, recovered a muffed punt in the end zone for Oklahoma State's first points of the season. Chris Carson barreled through several Lions on a 14-yard touchdown run, and Seales stretched out for a 24-yard scoring grab to make it 21-0 with 8:10 left in the first quarter.
''Obviously, it didn't start out the way we wanted,'' Southeastern Louisiana coach Ron Roberts said. ''We kind of got overwhelmed in the first, and they jumped out on us. We had a huge number of special teams miscues, and we just have to clean a lot of things up.''
Henderson scored Southeastern Louisiana's only touchdown on a 26-yard run in the second quarter.
''We knew coming in that Oklahoma State was a great team, but our goal was to come in and play clean and play well, and we didn't do that,'' Roberts said.
TAKEAWAYS
SE LOUISIANA: Very little. The Lions brought in a new offensive coordinator Matt Barrett from Georgia Southern, and they netted just 203 yards.
''Well, obviously, very disappointing,'' Barrett said. ''We thought we prepared well. Obviously, we're playing a great football team and a tremendous, talented defensive front, and hat's off to them.''
OKLAHOMA STATE: The Cowboys did what they were supposed to do against Southeastern Louisiana, an FCS program that went 4-7 last season.
The Cowboys said during the preseason that they wanted to test their running game, but they didn't focus on it enough to learn much. They ran 37 times for 142 yards, and their leading rusher, Jeff Carr, had 42 yards on six carries.
''We made a few strikes running the ball,'' Gundy said. ''How much better we are at it, I'm not sure. It looks like it to me that we're a little better at it.''
PLAY OF THE GAME
Oklahoma State's Devante Averette stripped Southeastern Louisiana quarterback D'Shaie Landor, then pushed the ball up the sideline while he tried to recover it. He grabbed it and flipped it behind him as he spun while going out of bounds, and Ramon Richards caught it and ran it in for a 9-yard touchdown that gave the Cowboys a 38-7 lead.
UP NEXT
SE LOUISIANA: The Lions play at Southern Utah.
OKLAHOMA STATE: The Cowboys will host Central Michigan. The Chippewas made the Cowboys work to escape with a 24-13 win in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, last year.
LAST WORD
''We asked them to come out and play well early and take the game over, and they did that,'' Gundy said.
---
Follow Cliff Brunt on Twitter (at)CliffBruntAP