Wrestlers seek second victory over Oklahoma

Coach Smith said recent training helped players prepare.

By Ryan Huber

Published Feb. 2, 2007

Coming off a victory over Nebraska last weekend, the No. 2 Missouri wrestling team travels to Oklahoma for two Big 12 matches against No. 4 Oklahoma State on Saturday and No. 9 Oklahoma on Sunday.

Much like the Tiger football team attempted to complete the Texas two-step against Texas Tech and Texas A&M, the wrestling squad will try for an Oklahoma two-step of sorts, except according to coach Brian Smith, "it's harder."

"You think about it, Okie State has 35 national title banners," he said. "Nobody else in any other sport can claim that. You're beating the New York Yankees times 10 when you go down there."

Oklahoma State is in a self-proclaimed building year, but as the most heralded program in college wrestling history, even a down year is better than most programs could ever achieve.

"How many times does a team have a down year in any sport and be ranked fourth?" Smith said.

Smith's squad is coming off a training phase in which individual wrestlers worked on certain aspects of their game in hopes of exploiting strengths and minimizing weaknesses against their final stretch of opponents.

"For most of our guys, it was good," Smith said. "We have about seven guys who are really healthy, and for them, they got a lot out of it."

The Tigers already beat Oklahoma State once this year for the second time in school history at the National Duals, but this weekend's match will have a much different atmosphere to it.

"We are going to be facing a lot more adversity than at the National Duals because they are going to have four, five, maybe six or seven thousand people there," he said. "They have a lot of pride. I know their coach, and he is going to have them prepared to wrestle us. They don't ever think they should lose to Missouri."