photo by: Mike Gunnoe/Special to the Journal-World

Lawrence High head coach Clint Bowen yells out instructions to his players against Lawrence Free State Friday, October 25, 2024, in Lawrence.

Former Lawrence High School football coach and longtime Kansas assistant coach Clint Bowen was named Oklahoma State’s interim defensive coordinator on Sunday.

Bowen was hired by the recently fired Mike Gundy in December as an offensive quality control coach at Oklahoma State, but after a shakeup in the coaching staff, Bowen has been promoted to defensive coordinator by interim coach Doug Meacham. Meacham told media in Stillwater, Oklahoma, that the familiarity the two have with each other makes him comfortable with Bowen leading the defense.

“He’s such a great guy, and I think he’s a players’ coach,” Meacham said on Monday. “I think the players feel like he cares, and the players feel like he’s in it to get the best out of them.”

Prior to moving to Stillwater, Bowen spent four years coaching at LHS, where the Lions went 26-15. Bowen told reporters on Monday that coaching high school is “the greatest gig there is” with the level of personal impact that comes with the job.

“To this day, most of my text messages come from my high school kids, and they’re still asking for advice on this and that,” Bowen said. “It’s a special job in terms of what you can do to impact kids.”

Bowen graduated from Lawrence in 1990 and played for Kansas from 1991-94. In high school, Bowen was a part of three state championship teams under coach Bill Freeman.

Bowen started coaching in 1996 as a graduate assistant coach at Kansas and spent the majority of the next 23 years coaching the Jayhawks on defense. He had four different stints as the defensive coordinator of the Jayhawks, and he held defensive coordinator positions at Western Kentucky and North Texas when he wasn’t in Lawrence.

Bowen replaced Todd Grantham, who was also hired by Gundy in December. Through four games, Oklahoma State is allowing 35.0 points and 473 yards per game, both of which are the most among Power Four teams. A challenge for the remainder of the season will be how to balance what the defense has done so far with what Bowen wants the defense to do the rest of the year.

“My approach is we have to go back to step one of the process,” Bowen said. “What do we do? Master the reactions, and then start figuring out what the opponent is doing, and we’ll start from there, and we’ll be as basic as we need to be.”

Oklahoma State will play at Kansas on Nov. 1 in a game that will be a return to Lawrence for multiple members of the Oklahoma State team. Meacham was the offensive coordinator at Kansas from 2017-18, and Bowen’s youngest son Banks Bowen is a true freshman quarterback for the Cowboys. Banks Bowen was the quarterback for Lawrence High School from 2023-24.

The Cowboys will be at Arizona on Saturday for the team’s first game with Bowen running the defense and the second with Meachum as the interim head coach.