After a very solid Day 1, the OSU Cowboys were looking to put some distance between themselves and the University of Northern Iowa Panthers on Sunday and attempt to run away with the Big XII title. The Cowboys had six in the finals to UNI’s four, along with three head-to-head matchups.
After a very solid losers bracket in round 3, the Panthers narrowed the gap and OSU only had a 12 point lead going into the 8:00 PM spotlight finals matches. Without considering bonus points, it would take a combination of two OSU wins and/or UNI losses for OSU to come out on top. The Pokes were the higher-seeded wrestlers in three of their six finals bout, while UNI was higher seed at three of their four.
Unfortunately, the Pokes didn’t wrestle as well as they would have liked and lost their first five matches, including all three head-to-head matchups. Iowa State’s Paniro Johnson was able to beat UNI’s Colin Realbuto at 149, causing the mostly Cowboy crowd to give him a standing ovation.
With this combination of wins and losses, OSU and UNI entered the Heavyweight matchup tied for the championship. Most Cowboy fans felt pretty good with their undefeated closer Wyatt Hendrickson up, but Arizona State’s Cohlton Schultz was not going to go easy. And Hendrickson appeared to get a little banged up during the match, which caused some real concern from the crowd.
Captain America came through in the end and pulled out the win, and sealed the Big XII championship for the Cowboys and 75% of the arena breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t a show that the Cowboy faithful had come to expect this year, but it was its 56th overall conference championship and first since 2021.
Three wrestlers outwrestled their seeds (Spratley, Jamison, Travis), five underwrestled, and two did what they were supposed to do.
On a slightly more positive note, while Reece Witcraft is going to be praying for an iffy at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, OSU qualified nine other guys, including Teague Travis who had to finish 4th to make it. Here’s how the day went down individually:
125: Troy Spratley faced 3 seed Jeff Strickenbarger (W. Virginia) and looking back, this was an omen of things to come. After some aggressive wrestling for most of the tournament by most of the Pokes, Spratley appeared to be a little reserved and tight here.
Neither guy scored in the 1st, the 2nd was marred by repeated start cautions by both guys and an attempted ride out by Spratley. Spratley held on a bit too long in a tough position and Strickenbarger was able to get a reverse to go up 2-0 entering the 3d. Spratley escaped fairly quickly and spent the rest of the 3d not taking many chances and went to OT based on the escape and riding time point.
