By Mike Finn

Iowa and Oklahoma State are the two most storied programs in Division I and have been the hottest this season, especially in early January when both teams won national dual tournaments.

            The top-ranked Hawkeyes captured its third straight NWCA National Duals in Cedar Falls Iowa, Jan. 10, one day after the No. 4 Cowboys won the 30th-annual Virginia Duals in Hampton, Va.

            But when it came to the teams’ dual meet on Jan. 16 in Iowa City, neither head coach was particularly pleased with his team’s performance after the Hawkeyes prevailed, 19-16.

            “I give our guys credit with what they’ve done in the last couple weeks but we have to get to the next step,” said Iowa coach Tom Brands. “The Big Tens are seven weeks from today and the national finals are nine weeks from today. (Time) flies and we have to be ready. These kids know what they have to do to get ready.”

            “We’ve made progress,” said OSU mentor John Smith, whose team has come a long way since last March’s 15th-place performance — the worse in Cowboy history — but saw four of his wrestlers get rode for over three minutes in their matches and his higher-ranked wrestlers fail to score many bonus points in the dual.  “We wrestled poor and came back after not so great efforts. I was hoping to take a bigger leap with our performance. There is nothing that we can’t change.”

            Both coaches were pleased in the performance of some of their wrestlers like Iowa’s 125-pound redshirt freshman Matt McDonough — who majored OSU senior Chris Notte — and 174-pound Jay Borschel (a 9-1 winner of Mike Benefiel), who Brands called, “smooth and when he’s smooth, he’s dynamite.”

            Smith, meanwhile, saw redshirt freshman Alex Meade (165) defeat senior Ryan Morningstar, 5-3.

            “I like the fact that he scored in the third period with the go-around rather than try to hold him off,” Smith said. “If people are behind, they are going to come. When they shoot, you score. Don’t push them back to their feet and give them another opportunity to score.”

            But there are question marks and Brands doesn’t want to be reminded of his.

            The former Hawkeye national champion and fourth-year coach doesn’t care if his line-up is far from being set and doesn’t want anyone — especially reserves on his team — to think they aren’t as good as anyone in the country.

            “It’s a tribute to our young men that we are in the program and are geared the right way,” said Brands. “What we talk about daily is that your marching orders that you are going to be the champion in your weight class, regardless of where you are in the pecking order (on the Iowa team).”

            There have been question marks for the Hawkeyes at five different weights: three because of injuries to 2009 NCAA qualifiers like Daniel Dennis (133), Chad Beatty (197) and Dan Erekson (heavyweight). But Brands has also has had to chose from as many as three wrestlers to solidify the 141- and 157-pound weight classes.

            After the dual with OSU, Brands was upset with Aaron Janssen, who was the only Hawkeye to give up bonus points in a 16-7 loss to Neil Erisman.

            “Janssen, you are on public notice,” declared Brands. “This is the big time. There is no, ‘I’m glad to be in the lineup.’ I’m hard on him but dog-gone it, I know what kind of ability he has and I know what it means to him to.”

            Brands said Janssen wrestled differently when he knew well in advance that he would wrestle against Oklahoma State, compared to the past when  it was a toss-up between him and Jake Kerr.

            “There is no entitlement,” Brands said. “When we have two to three guys ready to go at that weight class, (Janssen is) better because he wants to be the guy and so he gets ready to wrestle. We gave him a little more relaxation and little sense or urgency.”

            On the other hand, sophomore Montell Marion responded well in his first match since the National Duals where the 141-pounder lost in a defensive pin to Minnesota’s Mike Thorn in the semifinals and was replaced by teammate Dan LeClere in the championship dual with Iowa State.

            Against Oklahoma State, Marion blanked Jamal Parks, 4-0, by riding the Cowboy for 3:16, including the entire third period.

            “Montell Marion not only shut him down, but he’s also firing,” said Brands. “Maybe we need to take a page from Oklahoma State. We need to make Montell Marion wrestle more mistake free, but still hitting those big-time shots. When he wrestles solid and focused and free and not trying to take on the whole world, he’s dog-gone tough.”

            “I’ve been working hard for a while in the room and I’ve been seeing a lot of improvement with my aggressiveness and technique,” said Marion, who followed assistant coach Terry Brands from the Olympic Training Center a year ago. “The fact is that you have to let your performance carry over into big matches in front of fans, on the road, in tournaments. Thus far, it hasn’t been to the level that I want it to be.”

            Brands called these Cowboys Smith’s “best team.”

            But the 19th-year Oklahoma State coach believes some of his wrestlers weren’t ready for the Carver-Hawkeye Arena, which included, 10,967 fans.

            “You embrace this environment,” Smith said. “It’s the same you are going to get in the Big 12s or NCAAs. You dream about this. You compete in this. I’m just disappointed that we didn’t compete harder than we did.”

            One of those matches came at 133 pounds, where redshirt freshman Jordan spent much of the first period backing up and trailed 2-1 Dennis — who returned from an ankle injury — with the  difference coming on a stalling point with 58 seconds left in the bout.

            “I think (Oliver’s strategy) was survival,” Smith. “I don’t think he understood the strength and the power and how tough Dennis is. He didn’t control the mat obviously but he didn’t give up easy points either. I’d like to see him be a little more aggressive and do a few more things. It takes a lot to beat a guy like Dennis.”

            And Oliver proved that in the final seconds of the bout when he scored a takedown — after the match  was restarted with five seconds left — at the buzzer for a 3-2 victory.

            “There were five seconds of wrestling left and you’re winning by one stall call,” Brands said. “(Dennis) was very predictable laying his hands across against a guy (Oliver) who’s dangerous and out-slicked us. That’s what happened.”

            The deciding match may have come at 184 pounds where Phil Keddy — who’s struggled recently, especially after losing twice to Iowa State’s Jerome Ward — defeated OSU’s Clayton Foster, 3-2, and gave Iowa a 19-10 lead.

            Considering Oklahoma State’s final two wrestlers (197-pound Alan Gelogaev  and heavyweight Jared Rosholt) were highly-ranked against Iowa reserves (Luke Lofthouse and Blake Rasing), the Cowboys were mathematically alive if the two OSU wrestlers scored bonus points.

            Instead, they settled for decisions, especially Gelogaev, a native of Russia who was 20-1 before the match, but only won 3-2. Rosholt, ranked No. 2 by WIN, only managed a 7-5 win and was taken down twice in the final period.

            “He probably underestimated collegiate wrestling and how hard it is,” Smith said of his sophomore from Moscow. “Probably wrestling outside Gallagher-Iba Arena, he’s probably never seen anything like it. I’m not sure he was quite ready. The things I’ve been trying to reinforce have not been sticking in his head.”           

            Brands, meanwhile, didn’t want to admit it but he felt tired.

            “Right now I felt we came out of a scrap and it’s a little bit draining because of where we come from and what we put together,” he said. “It was  a big statement for our program and I feel that our guys, for the whole, rose to the occasion. I give them credit and we have to get better going into this next phase.”