The Oklahoma State wrestling team, ranked No. 4 in the nation, crowned three individual champions in winning its ninth Big 12 team title and its 43rd overall conference title last Saturday at Oklahoma’s McCasland Fieldhouse in Norman.

OSU 133-pounder Jordan Oliver, 141-pounder Jamal Parks and 184-pounder Clayton Foster were all crowned as Big 12 individual champions at the event, with 157-pounder Neil Erisman, 174-pounder Mike Benefiel and heavyweight Jared Rosholt placing second at their respective weight classes.

The Cowboys finished with 70.5 team points. No. 2 Iowa State took second with 69 points and No. 8 Oklahoma was third with 64 points. Missouri (33 points) and Nebraska (32 points) rounded out the team leader board.

The title was the 11th of coach John Smith’s career, as the Cowboy mentor owns two Big Eight titles to go with his nine Big 12 crowns. Oliver and Oklahoma 125-pounder Jarrod Patterson were recognized with co-outstanding wrestler honors.

“I had no clue I was going to get that,” Oliver said. “I was sure that was going to be either Clayton (Foster) or (Jarrod) Patterson. It was awesome. It’s an exciting thing to get voted outstanding wrestler in the Big 12 Conference with all these outstanding wrestlers. I guess it’s something I’m going to have to keep pushing for these next three years.”

“It’s definitely good to be on top in the Big 12,” said Smith. “It’s been since, I believe, 2006. They become really special when you haven’t won one in a while. I was really encouraged by our effort. There were some ups and downs throughout the tournament. In the end, it took a couple sophomores and a junior that won in the finals to put us over the top. Clayton (Foster) sealing the deal there at 184 against a tough competitor and a guy that he hasn’t beat in his career. It was a special win for him.”

Perhaps the defining moment of the championship round came when 184-pounder Clayton Foster topped No. 3 Max Askren of Missouri by a 10-6 decision. After surrendering the first takedown of the bout in the first period, Foster recovered to score a reversal of his own before yielding an Askren escape. Foster started the second period in the top position and scored a key two-point nearfall to go up, 4-3. An Askren escape brought the score to 4-4. The third period was all Foster, as the Cowboy junior got things going with an escape, then bagged two takedowns and added a riding time point to seal his win. The win was Foster’s first in five career tries against Askren and all but clinched the Big 12 title for the Cowboys.

“I like the way that we were competing in the finals with Jordan (Oliver) starting us off, Jamal (Parks) following up and Neil (Erisman) in a tough battle,” Smith said. “I just thought that it appeared that we were going to wrestle hard and win the championship. We needed everybody’s effort; it took everything.”

Oliver got things going strong for OSU in the championship round when he hit a five-point move in the second period to fuel his 6-2 win over No. 7 Nick Fanthorpe of Iowa State. Fanthorpe got in on Oliver’s left ankle, but Oliver wrapped his right leg over the top of Fanthorpe to score a takedown of his own and quickly turn him to his back for a three-point nearfall.

“When we wrestled in a dual meet earlier he kind of knew it was coming and circled away from it,” Oliver said of Fanthorpe. “In this match, when he did get to my leg and I released out and went for it, he didn’t circle out. He put more pressure into me to try to get the takedown, I think, more than worry about the tilt. I caught him off-guard and I got him.”

Parks kept things going with his 3-2 win over Zack Bailey. Ranked No. 3 in the country, Bailey is the highest-ranked wrestler Parks has beaten in his OSU career. The two wrestlers traded escapes to start the second and third periods, respectively, but the deciding moment came when Parks bagged the winning takedown with 15 seconds left in the third period. Bailey escaped with one second left, but it was too late. The win was Parks’ third in four career bouts against Bailey.

With 70.5 team points, OSU improved on last year’s team total at the Big 12 Championships by 30.5 points, making it the largest one-year improvement in conference history.

Neil Erisman, the third of OSU’s six finalists, lost a tough 6-5 decision to No. 12 Shane Vernon of Oklahoma at 157 pounds. Both wrestlers scored a takedown and recorded an escape in the first period, then traded escapes to start the second and third periods, respectively. A Vernon takedown with 56 seconds remaining proved the difference in the bout, as Erisman was unable to answer after posting an escape.

OSU had three wrestlers compete in third-place bouts, with 125-pounder Chris Notte claiming a 6-4 victory over Nebraska’s David Klingsheim in a heated bout that saw both wrestlers get slapped with unsportsmanlike conduct penalties.

At 149 pounds, Luke Silver lost a wild 9-6 decision to Missouri’s Nick Hucke in which there was only one takedown the entire bout. OSU 165-pounder Alex Meade was upset in his third-place bout by Oklahoma’s Tyler Caldwell, who pitched a 5-0 shutout against the Cowboy redshirt freshman.

Perhaps the most exciting bout of the semifinal round was won by Foster, who escaped in the tiebreak period then rode Iowa State’s Jerome Ward out to claim a 6-5 win.

Parks also won an exciting semifinal bout, taking Missouri’s Todd Schavrien down with 14 seconds left on the clock to snare a 7-6 victory. Things weren’t nearly as difficult for Oliver, who stormed to a 10-2 major decision win over Missouri’s Nathan McCormick.

Erisman, seeded third at the championships by the Big 12 coaches, pulled an upset by scoring a comfortable 8-2 victory over 15th-ranked and second-seeded Andrew Sorenson of Iowa State.

Only one Cowboy wrestler competed in the pigtail round, with 197-pounder Alan Gelogaev losing a 6-5 decision to Missouri’s Brent Haynes. A technical violation by Gelogaev proved costly in his defeat.

Notte and Silver were both bonus-point winners in the consolation round, with Notte storming to a 16-2 major decision win over Missouri’s Eric Wilson and Silver pinning Nebraska’s Dustin Payne just one minute into their bout. Meade was an 11-4 winner over Nebraska’s James Nakashima.

The lone Cowboy to go down in the consolation bouts was Gelogaev, who dropped a 4-1 decision to Eric Lapotsky of Oklahoma.

The Cowboys compete at the NCAA Championships from March 18-20 at the Qwest Center in Omaha, Neb.

“It’s definitely a plus,” Smith said when asked about his squad’s youthfulness. “We just need to embrace what we have from this point forward with the NCAA tournament. Really feel relaxed and feel good about what we accomplished this weekend as we going into our training for the next week and a half.”

Oliver is ready for the challenge of the national tournament.

“In nationals, kids are going to come out hard in every match with nothing to lose,” Olive said. “I think we are going to have to pick up the pace and get better in certain positions. We still have stuff to work on, but we can wrestle better than we did. I’m not saying we wrestled bad, but there’s time for us to get better.”

OU wrestlers take third place with 3 champs

Three Oklahoma wrestlers won individual titles at the Big 12 Championships Saturday, a first for the Sooners since 2002. Those individual wins came at 125 pounds with Jarrod Patterson, at 149 with Kyle Terry and at 157 with Shane Vernon.

The conference title was the second-straight for Terry and the first for Patterson and Vernon.

“Three champions,” OU head coach Jack Spates said. “We had tremendous performances in virtually every match. Really, with the exception of one match, we wrestled better in every match than we had all year. So, it’s just a great, great performance.”

Oklahoma finished third in the team race with 64 points in front of a second-session crowd of 2,610 inside the Howard McCasland Field House. Additionally, Patterson was voted a “Co-Outstanding Wrestler” by league coaches. The true-freshman shared the honor with Oliver.

“He has a heart as big as his body,” Spates said of Patterson. “He’s a little guy. He weighs about 128 pounds and I think his heart is about 100 of those. What a great kid. (Andrew Long) is a kid who dominated us in the dual meet. To turn it around and win the Big 12 Championship under the lights, that’s a huge credit to him. If you had told me last year he was going to come in and do this, I wouldn’t have put a whole lot of money on it. It’s great when kids prove you wrong. Not that we didn’t think he was going to be a great one, but to do it this early with such poise and such character, it’s tremendous.”

“It is a great feeling,” Patterson said. “It was just last year I was wrestling in high school and I think I have come a long way since then. It is a big honor to be voted `Outstanding Wrestler’ because a lot of other guys deserved it.”

Zack Bailey was second at 141, while Kendric Maple (133), Tyler Caldwell (165) and Eric Lapotsky (197) all finished third in their respective classes.

“What a hero,” Spates said of Bailey. “You know, he was so far down last year that he was just laying down on the mat. We didn’t really want him to wrestle this year and he saw Jarrod King struggle with the same kind of injuries. He saw (King) win the nationals and said, `I want a piece of this.’ I think he will too. He will come back really strong for the NCAA Championships.”

Under the new qualifying criteria for the NCAA, nine Sooners - Patterson, Bailey, Terry, Vernon, Caldwell, Erich Schmidtke, Lapotsky and Fernandez - automatically punched their tickets to the National Tournament that will be held in Omaha, Neb. March 18-20.

Final Team Standings

1. Oklahoma State - 70.5 points

2. Iowa State - 66 points

3. Oklahoma - 64 points

4. Missouri - 33 points

5. Nebraska - 32 points

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 and is filed under Sports.