HOUSTON — It was just a year ago that OSU was the team playing in a bowl without its starting quarterback. OSU that had a slew of players, five of them starters, who defected via the transfer portal before the bowl game. The short-term future of the program looked shaky.

But Wednesday night in Houston, OSU’s stability won out — glaringly so compared to a mishmash Texas A&M team left in ruins following Jimbo Fisher’s ousting.

The Cowboys rode their cast of main characters to a 31-23 Texas Bowl win against the Texas A&M extras. Alan Bowman threw for 402 yards, his most in a Cowboys uniform. Receivers Rashod Owens and Brennan Presley, trusted hands all season, cruised past the century mark with 164-and 152-yard games.

Owens was the Texas Bowl MVP, which is saying something given that Presley’s 16 catches tied an OSU record.

Oh, and that guy Ollie Gordon II had a ho-hum 118 rushing yards on 27 carries.

Defensively, Nick Martin and Kendal Daniels shared the team high in tackles with seven, and Daniels had the game-sealing interception, taking a knee after the pick to start the victory celebration.

More: Brennan Presley ties Oklahoma State football record & more stats from Texas Bowl win

Ollie Gordon's return key for Cowboys' future

The same core players who sparked a turnaround season and led OSU to the Big 12 Championship Game were the same players who starred Wednesday night in Houston.

And here’s even more good news for the Cowboys: most of that group, headlined by Gordon, plans to return in 2024.

“We have good young guys that are gonna be developed, and then we might have 18 or 19 returning starters, I don’t know, I’m just throwing that number out,” OSU coach Mike Gundy said. “We’re a stable organization.”

It didn’t feel that way last December when quarterback Spencer Sanders and key defensive players Jabbar Muhammad, Mason Cobb and Trace Ford entered the transfer portal and didn’t play in OSU’s loss to Wisconsin in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl.

Barring a stream of surprises, there doesn’t figure to be a mass exodus, or even a minor one, this offseason in Stillwater.

“Selfishly, as a coach, you want everybody to stay the course and be back, but sometimes players have something that could be better for them and their future, and coaches have to respect that,” said Gundy, who won his 12th bowl game.

Gundy, having just concluded his 19th season as the Cowboys’ coach, is an old-school guy who’s learning to adapt in a new era.

“We have made adjustments as coaches, I have made adjustments as a head coach in trying to stay ahead of the volatility of college football,” Gundy said. “And the one thing we can do as coaches is take care of our players — be up front and honest with them and continue with discipline, structure, accountability and loyalty, and then they make the decision on what they wanna do. They play the game, we don’t play the game.”

More: Which college football coaches own most bowl wins? Oklahoma State's Mike Gundy climbs list

Cowboys hold off Aggies for Texas Bowl win

The game Wednesday wasn’t the cleanest of victories for OSU.

Texas A&M true freshman quarterback Marcel Reed, who entered the game after starter Jaylen Henderson got hurt on the first snap, gave the Cowboys far more trouble than a fourth-stringer should. Reed, who looks like a keeper in College Station, completed 61% of his passes, throwing for 361 yards.

The Aggies (7.4) averaged more yards per play than OSU (7.2) and the Texas A&M defense twice intercepted Bowman.

Given reports that Texas A&M was down some 30 scholarship players and had an interim head coach in Elijah Robinson — already working two jobs as Syracuse’s new defensive coordinator — the Aggies played a gutsy game.

OSU looked a little too comfortable after taking a 24-6 halftime lead. The Aggies outscored the Cowboys 17-7 in the second half.

But OSU, as it has since September, hung tough when things got dicey.

These Cowboys seem to like each other. Like playing with each other and hanging out together. It’s one of the reasons they want to keep the gang together and run it back next season.

“We knew we were good,” Gordon said. “We stayed together and didn’t worry about the outside noise or anything extra.”

More: 'Ollie is for the people': How Ollie Gordon II became the face of Oklahoma State

Cowboys in a 'way different' spot than last offseason

Daniels, a sophomore, said the program is in a “way different” spot than this time last year.

“We can build off this in the offseason and not start from scratch like we did last year,” Daniels said. “We’ll grab some guys out of the portal, but at the end of the day, the guys that are here are here. We’ll be back and we’ll add onto this.”

Asked what’s different about this team, Daniels gave a specific example.

“I joke with the offensive linemen all day every day,” said Daniels, a safety. “I’ve never talked to them years before. It’s a brotherhood …”

Bowman, in his sixth year and having played at Texas Tech and Michigan before transferring to OSU, was asked how the chemistry of this OSU squad compares to his past teams.

“At Michigan, we were just high riding, front running, winning sons of guns and we were beating the hell out of everybody,” Bowman said. “Obviously we were close-knit and tight there, but we were just better than everybody else. And at Texas Tech we weren’t as close and we weren’t winning games.

“Here, the adversity that we’ve been through, the downs that we’ve been through, the losses that we’ve taken, the injuries that we’ve sustained, to be able to come back together, to beat OU, to go to the Big 12 Championship Game, to go win the bowl game against another SEC team … to be able to do what we did just shows how much we appreciate and care and love for each other and are gonna fight for each other.”

Joe Mussatto is a sports columnist for The Oklahoman. Have a story idea for Joe? Email him at jmussatto@oklahoman.com. Support Joe's work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State football wins Texas Bowl, enters 2024 on stable ground