Oklahoma State rounds up Cyclone wrestlers at home

Jeff Stell

A week after No. 2 Oklahoma State claimed a 25-13 victory over the ISU wrestling team, not much changed as the Cowboys defeated the fourth-ranked Cyclones again Friday at Hilton Coliseum.The Cowboys won five of the final six matches to turn a 11-3 deficit into a 25-14 win. The meet went similar to last weekend’s as once again the Cowboys won six of the 10 matches wrestled and the same four Cyclones were victorious.”We wrestled well but not well enough,” ISU head coach Bobby Douglas said. “I wasn’t disappointed in anyone’s performance. I thought they gave everything they had, but they came up short.”The meet started at 165 and the Cyclones took advantage by winning three of the four matches. Joe Heskett got things going with a 19-2 technical fall victory at 165.”We hit their big part of the lineup early and basically survived,” Cowboy head coach John Smith said. After a Cowboy win at 171, Cyclone undefeated top-ranked Cael Sanderson topped third-ranked Dan Cormier 10-3 at 184. Cormier was on the defensive from the opening whistle and was penalized three times for stalling.”He was making it tough for me to score on him,” Sanderson said. “I need to make some adjustments to deal with that. I don’t think I was doing what I needed to do, I’m not sure why, but I’ll work on it.”Sanderson improved to 106-0 and won’t have to wait long to get another shot at Cormier. The two wrestle at the NWCA All-Star Classic tonight at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn.”I wrestle him again at the All-Star meet so I need to watch some tape and see what he’s doing exactly,” Sanderson said. “Mix some things up a little bit and score more points.”Heskett will join Sanderson in the Classic. Heskett is top-ranked at 165 and will take on No. 2 Don Pritzlaff of Wisconsin in a rematch of last season’s national championship match in which Pritzlaff came out on top.Zach Thompson followed Sanderson with a big win at 197. Thompson, rated second, improved to 4-0 against No. 4 Mark Munoz with a 2-1 win. Munoz was penalized for stalling with 40 seconds which made the difference in the match.Thompson owns two victories over Munoz this season and defeated Munoz in the semifinals at the NCAA tournament last season.”Mark has to get tougher. Period,” Smith said. “Thompson is a tough wrestler, he’s not a flashy guy. But what he does, he does well. Mark has to get tougher in that match.”The Cowboys rally started at heavyweight where James Huml topped Mark Knauer, 12-9. In the next four matches, the Cowboys piled up the bonus points collecting two technical fall victories and a pin.The pin came from freshman Johnny Thompson in the 133-pound match. Thompson led only 2-1 over Matt Azevedo in the second period when he tossed Azevedo straight to his back for the fall.”Anytime you get pinned, it’s going to hurt,” Douglas said. “Six points is six points. That was the back-breaker.”