Notebook: Cassity Family Ties, Chef Sione and Cowboy Backs

September 2, 2021

STILLWATER — The Cowboys’ season-opener is only two sleeps away.

Oklahoma State players met with reporters Tuesday for the final time ahead of Oklahoma State’s game against Missouri State at 6 p.m. Saturday in Boone Pickens Stadium. Here are some of the things those guys hit on.

Family Ties

Braden Cassity is 0-2 against his brother, but he enters Saturday as the heavy favorite.

Cassity, an OSU Cowboy back, has a brother, Skylar, on the Missouri State coaching staff. Before getting to Springfield to coach the Bears’ linebackers, Skylar spent two seasons on the Texas Tech staff as a graduate assistant during the 2018 and 2019 seasons, two years where Braden’s Cowboys lost to the Red Raiders.

Football has been a family affair for the Cassitys. Mike Cassity, Braden’s and Skyler’s father, was the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator for two seasons and was on staff in Stillwater from 1997-2000. In the span of his 40-year coaching career, Mike also served as Louisville’s defensive coordinator under current Missouri State head coach Bobby Petrino.

On Tuesday, Braden said since he gave his mother the tickets to the game, she wasn’t allowed to wear any Missouri State gear but said she might wear some red nail polish to support both of her boys.

Braden also noted that he and Skylar have talked leading up to the game.

“Just talking ball, not giving anything away, though,” Cassity said. “Some friendly smack talk. He sent me some pictures of me on film, said I needed to do some more bicep curls — things like that.”

Chef Sione

OSU defensive tackle Jayden Jernigan has shed some weight entering 2021. Sione Asi has jokingly offered to cook for Jernigan to put that weight back on, but Jernigan hasn’t taken him up on that offer quite yet.

Asi, listed at 6-foot-1, 320 pounds, is Polynesian and said he cooks Polynesian food. He said he has to cook it in small batches because if he cooks too much, it doesn’t taste as good.

“We love our meats,” Asi said. “It could be lamb or chicken and just a bunch of seasoning, too. That’s kind of like the love to it. Then we always gotta have it with rice or something. Then like a taro root, something on the side as well to eat with it. That’s why we’re so big, thick.”

Hard-Working Cowboy Backs

The six Cowboy backs on OSU’s roster have a combined 14 catches for 119 yards and three touchdowns — and all of that is from Logan Carter.

The position group is a bit of an unknown entering 2021 after Jelani Woods transferred to Virginia. In the first depth chart of the season, Carter was unsurprisingly listed as OSU’s starter with Braden Cassity as his backup and Quinton Stewart and Austin Jarrard sharing an “or” behind Cassity.

A lot of players take interesting paths to Cowboy back. Woods was a converted quarterback. Carter started his career as a walk-on. Cassity is a converted defensive end. That has started to change somewhat recently with OSU bringing in Stewart as a scholarship freshman in the 2020 class and Jarrard as a scholarship junior college transfer in 2021.

Regardless of how guys get there, Cassity says the group prides itself on its work.

“It’s been awesome having Logan and Austin to work with,” Cassity said. “They’re both great guys. Definitely bring a lot of depth to the room, just really working hard. We consider ourselves one of the hardest-working groups on the team, and we really take pride in that.”

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