Five Cowboys, one Sooner advance in first round
TULSA — Oklahoma State’s Daton Fix didn’t need the full first period to end his opening match at the NCAA wrestling championships on Thursday morning at the BOK Center.
The native of nearby Sand Springs brought the first big cheer of the day when he scored a takedown, then a fourpoint nearfall in the first 70 seconds of his match against American University’s Jack Maida, the No. 31 seed in the 133pound bracket.
The second-seeded Fix ended it at the 2:13 mark when he put Maida on his back for the pin.
His fast start was one of five OSU wins in the first round, with Kaden Gfeller (157 pounds), Dustin Plott (174), Travis Wittlake (184) and Luke Surber (197) also pulling off wins.
With a 99-4 record in his career at OSU, Fix was set to chase win No. 100 in the second round on Thursday night.
OSU suffered losses at 125, 141, 149, 165 and heavyweight.
Of those, OSU suffered just one upset loss, at 141, where 13th-seeded Carter Young lost 5-0 to Minnesota’s 20thseeded Jakob Bergeland. Young is dealing with a knee injury suffered in the Big 12 Championships earlier this month.
Plott, who is OSU’s second-highest seed at No 5 in the 174-pound bracket, took down Pitt’s Luca Augustine with 40 seconds left in the match for a 3-2 victory.
Not long after, Plott’s Tuttle High teammate — Surber, who was the No. 15 seed at 197 — fought his way to an 8-1 decision over Oregon State’s Tanner Harvey
At 184, Wittlake advanced as the No. 10 seed with a 4-0 win over Illinois’ Dylan Connell.
That gave OSU 7.0 points in the first session, tied for 14th. Penn State held the team lead with 16 points, while North Carolina State sat in second at 12.5 and Iowa third at 12.0.
Heritage Hall double-dip
Back in February of 2017, as teammates at Heritage Hall, Kaden Gfeller and Rodrick Mosley won individual state wrestling championships at State Fair Arena in Oklahoma City on the same day.
On Thursday afternoon, the two were on the mat for first-round matches at the NCAA Championships at the same time.
Mosley, a redshirt senior at Gardner Webb, was the No. 24 seed at 165 pounds and suffered a difficult 1-0 loss to Stanford’s Shane Griffith.
Gfeller, a super-senior at 157 for OSU, edged George Mason’s Peter Pappas 7-5 in sudden-victory tiebreaker.
Gfeller gave up an escape in the first tiebreaker, but scored a takedown with four seconds left in the period. Starting neutral in the second tiebreaker, Gfeller avoided Pappas’ attacks to secure the win.
Sooners get early win from Mosha Schwartz
OU came into the day as the underdog in seven of its eight first-round matches, and the seeds played against the Sooners.
Ninth-seeded Mosha Schwartz earned a 4-1 decision over Iowa State’s Casey Swiderski, the No. 24 seed at 141 pounds.
But the rest of OU’s contingent, all seeded 18th or higher in their brackets, went winless in Thursday’s opening round.
Now, OU coach Lou Rosselli and the Sooners must turn their focus to fighting through the losers’ bracket, which was an area they performed well in two weeks ago at the Big 12 Championships.
“If we don’t use more energy out there in round two, there’ll be some people out of the tournament,” Rosselli said. “Nobody wants to be in the wrestlebacks, but at the end of the day, when your seeds are 20th or 25th, you just gotta go out there and keep fighting. If you keep doing that, then good things will happen to you.
“You gotta keep taking more risks. Some of them didn’t take enough risks. If you don’t take any risks, I don’t see how you can win at this level.”
BOK Center proving itself
While the BOK Center has hosted a number of large events since opening in 2008, it hadn’t yet seen anything as unique as the NCAA wrestling championships.
With 330 wrestlers from dozens of schools across the country in the building Thursday morning, Tulsa’s arena held up well.
A few rows of the lower seating sections had to be removed to accommodate the eight-mat setup used on the first day of the event, but a near-capacity crowd of 15,199 filled the seats early for the action.
The BOK has been home to the Big 12 wrestling championships the past seven years, but that event pales in comparison to this.