MASTERS OF THEIR FATE
Cowboys relished favorite role; beginning of dynasty?
ST. LOUIS — While some coaches downplay the “favorite” role, Oklahoma State’s John Smith relished the expectations placed on his team even before the Cowboys won the program’s third straight — and NCAA-leading 33rd — national championship, March 19, in the Savvis Center.
“I’ve told my guys all year that pressure is a privilege,” Smith said. “You’ve earned it and that’s the way it is, bottom line. You don’t duck it. You face it and accept the challenge. You can’t hide from it. If you feel (the pressure), you’re not going to win it individually or as a team.”
The only thing the Cowboys felt after dominating the NCAA field was success as the nine national qualifiers won 38 of 47 matches, including all five individual championship matches by the Fab Five: Zack Esposito (149 pounds), Johny Hendricks (165), Chris Pendleton (174), Jake Rosholt (197) and Steve Mocco (heavyweight).
Not since 1997 when an Iowa team set an NCAA record with 170 points and tied the mark of five individual titles set by the 1986 Hawkeye team has a Division I team so dominated the national championships. The 70-point victory margin (153-83) by OSU over runner-up Michigan was also second behind the 1986 Iowa performance when those Hawkeyes out-distanced Oklahoma by 73.25 points (158-84.75).
“I preached the last couple years that we are going to have to earn it and I go over and over it again,” said Smith, who called the 2005 Cowboys his best team in his 13 years at the OSU helm. “This team this weekend earned this championship.”
And the Cowboys should keep winning, considering Smith returns every one but Pendleton, the two-time champ, who understood Smith’s message when Oklahoma State began its season at the historically-tough Kaufman-Brand Open in Omaha, Nov. 20, one day before he and teammates Esposito and Mocco competed in the NWCA All-Star meet in Edwardsville, Ill.
And by the end of the year, Oklahoma State scheduled a road trip that sent the Cowboys to Nebraska three days before travelling to face Hofstra and Lehigh on the same day (Feb. 13) in front of boisterous opposing fans.“Our team has done everything that was asked of us this year without complaining or backing down,” Pendleton said. “We were the ones who traveled to their home states and wrestled them in their arenas and sometimes scheduled three duals in a meet while juggling practices and classes.
“We came out unscathed and by the time the Big 12s and NCAAs rolled around, I swear a week in Stillwater with coach Smith was a nightmare.”
Pendleton was talking about the individual workouts that the Cowboys had with their coach.
“Coach Smith is probably the best person in the world about knowing what motivates each individual person,” said Pendleton, who defeated Missouri’s Ben Askren, 10-5, for a second consecutive year in his championship match. “He knows that I am a terrible practice room wrestler. But he knows that each of us also needs to be treated the same way. He needed to get in Mocco’s face and yell and scream at him. He’s so good at pushing your buttons to make you train harder and make you want to be a champion.”
Pendleton added that he saw Smith’s system work on Hendricks, who won his first NCAA title.
“Johny had gone through some tough times this year. He got hurt a lot. He got down on himself a lot and lost to people he shouldn’t have lost to,” Pendleton said. “John kept asking Johny every day, ‘Do you want to be a national champion? Then train like it.’
“That was bad for me because Johny would go harder wrestling me in practice.”
Smith also made the decision to bring several young wrestlers into the line-up: true freshmen Coleman Scott (125) and Nathan Morgan (133) and redshirt freshman Daniel Frishkorn, who combined to win 10 of 17 matches in St. Louis. With Scott (eighth place) and Frishkorn (fourth) earning All-American honors, the Cowboy program is expected to stay strong for a long time.
“A lot of people didn’t think we needed those freshmen but chemistry wise when we brought them out it changed the complexity of our team,” said Smith. “We did need them. What I saw when they came into the line-up was a team that was lifted; the way they were winning, the way they performed, the way they showed a lot of courage out there.”
Smith understood the history of Oklahoma State wrestling — the Cowboys have now won 44 percent of the 75 NCAA tournaments held — and pressures of being an Oklahoma State wrestler better than anyone after Smith set an OSU record by winning 154 matches (compared to just seven losses and two ties) and two NCAA championships in 1987 and 1988.
But Smith said he later learned that his accomplishments on the mat did little in helping his wrestlers achieve the same success. For it wasn’t that long ago that Smith and the OSU program went nine years without winning a team championship — and finished a school-low seventh place in 1995 — before starting a new winning streak for Oklahoma State in 2003.
“You work a lot harder (coaching) than being an athlete. It takes a lot more than being an athlete,” Smith said. “That was something that I had to learn.”
Smith said he had to learn to admit that there was a problem.
“More importantly, we took the time to look at the little things that make the difference, whether it be skill, whether it be my personal behavior, whether it be my staff’s personal behavior,” Smith said. “There was a list of about ten things that I worked on. The important thing was that we had the courage to admit that we had some weaknesses that we needed to change.
“I had to identify some things that I was obviously doing wrong. It wasn’t so much about winning the NCAA championship. It was about a team having their best effort at the national tournament. If that meant winning, great. The problem was that I could not accept leaving a tournament feeling empty because we hadn’t performed well. That was more important than winning.”
Smith also said he learned to adjust to different wrestlers’ styles as opposed to making them adapt to the “Oklahoma State” style.
“My freshman year, he had me go so much upper body and practice that over and over again,” Pendleton said. “I asked, ‘Why would you want me to work on that?’ We were known for the low single and high crotch takedowns. Slowly, he started to teach us to go upper body. “Then all of a sudden, it wasn’t that we could just out-technique everyone in the nation or out-slick them. It got to the point where I’m going to go out there and break this guy.
“People are going to be scared of us.”
Pendleton said he believed that many opponents in Division I wrestling had lost their fear of the Oklahoma State mystique.
“There was the perception that we were going to self-destruct at the end if people kept hammering and pushing on us,” Pendleton said.
And now the leaders in setting a new standard in college wrestling … and perhaps for a long time … are the Cowboys.
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