Finals Recap: Four Cowboys Win Individual Titles, OSU Wins Second Straight Team Crown

MATCH-BY-MATCH RECAP
PHOTOS

TULSA — The Cowboys clinched their second straight Big 12 title after the first finals bout of the evening, and then they closed the event by rattling off three straight finals wins.

Oklahoma State is, again, the Big 12’s champion. It’s the program’s 57th conference title. OSU finished with 176 team points, a half-point shy of the conference’s record (which the Cowboys set in 2017).

David Taylor becomes the second Big 12 coach to win team titles in his first two seasons as head coach, joining some guy named Cael Sanderson, who won three in a row at Iowa State. (Sanderson is now Penn State’s coach and has been since Taylor was wrestling there.)

Let’s take a look at the Cowboy champs.

Jax Forrest Is an Absolute Demon

Jax Forrest was on an entirely different level than his competition all weekend, with his finals win against Kyler Larkin being the latest bit of proof.

Larkin’s only loss entering the bout was a medical forfeit. Forrest majored the Sun Devil 15-2 and was searching for his fourth straight tech of the weekend.

Two of Forrest’s matches this weekend didn’t make it out of the first period, another went about 30 seconds into the second and then he did that in his final. Across his four matches, Forrest outscored his Big 12 foes a combined 70-12. All 12 of those points were escapes.

“It’s just wrestling,” Forrest said. “It’s what I train every day, multiple times a day, early mornings, late nights, it’s just for times like this.

“I wasn’t thinking about the Big 12s until a couple weeks ago because in my mind, this is just a stepping stone until nationals in two weeks.”

It’s terrifying how good he already is, and all the high schoolers who had to go to algebra after Forrest rolled them into a pretzel should feel some sort of vindication.

Forrest tallied seven nearfall points against Larkin. He’s flexed his ball-and-chain tilt throughout the year, but he hit it a few times on Larkin while Larkin got up to his feet. Forrest said he thought back to his first time wrestling Larkin (back in 2024) to stick with the move despite Larkin getting up.

“It’s actually something that I’ve been practicing,” Forrest said. “Because I wrestled him a couple years ago, and he kept standing up and I would just let him go. Where obviously you could tell today I wanted to keep him down on the mat. I wanted to get it and score points from it. Sometimes I was able to, sometimes he’d just roll through, so it was just minor things even I need to still keep working on there.”

Vega Toughs Out Second Win Against Echemendia

You could cut the tension with a knife in Sergio Vega’s final against fellow Sunnyside High School (AZ) alum Anthony Echemendia.

The two wrestled a thriller in Stillwater earlier this year, and their meeting in the Big 12 final had a similar feel. It went to tiebreakers, where Vega rode out the 26-year-old, fifth-year senior to win it 2-1.

Echemendia rode Vega for 18 seconds in the first round of the tiebreaker. Vega nearly scored a takedown after escaping, but Echemendia was able to keep wrestling to fend it off. The OSU corner challenged it, but to no avail.

Vega was then able to reset and put his 30-second ride on to close out the match.

“Just gotta get tough,” Vega said. “I’ve been doing it all year. Just get tough. I don’t care what’s happening in the match — get tough. That’s all there is to it, just get tough and grit out those wins. That’s what I train every day in the room for. It was nothing, just have fun out there. Great opponent, that’s what we train for.”

Vega, a freshman, will enter his first NCAA Championships unbeaten, and he hasn’t even been taken down.

Redemption for Spratley

In his previous two tries at the Big 12 Championships, Troy Spratley had walked away with a pair of second-place finishes.

Then at nationals last year, Spratley again battled to second. But Saturday, he stood atop the podium.

Spratley beat Iowa State’s Stevo Poulin 5-2 in the final with all five of his points coming in the third period — a reversal, two nearfall points and a riding time point.

Spratley got in deep on a leg in the first and second periods, but Poulin was able to Houdini himself free. Then with Poulin on top to start the third, Spratley got him high on his back before slipping out from under his legs and scoring the reversal and putting on a nice ride.

Spratley was rocking a gnarly shiner on his right eye all weekend. He didn’t give much explanation for it other than it happened in practice.

“I’ve been here twice, came up short, but I said the third time I’m getting one,” Spratley said. “And I meant it when I said it. That’s what you saw right there when I went out there and got a turn. I didn’t have to. I probably could’ve just rode him out, but I wanted to make a statement and get a turn there.”

Swiderski Collects First Big 12 Title

This was Casey Swiderski’s third Big 12 Championships but first as a Cowboy, and after finishing fourth in 2023 and third in 2024, Swiderski stood atop the podium on Saturday.

Swiderski took on Northern Iowa’s Caleb Rathjen in the final, beating the Panther 5-3 with a takedown in the first period.

A few years ago, the OSU-heavy crowd and Swiderski got into it as he wrestled Jordan Williams in a semifinal. But being in an orange singlet this year, he had that crowd with him.

“I was on the backside of that crowd onetime, and I was like ‘Well, that sucks,'” Swiderski said. “Now I’m on the frontside of it, and it’s cool, ya know, Big 12 title. But I was saying all week it’s like the interim belt — doesn’t mean much. The Cowboys know what we’re here for, it’s the big one in a couple weeks.”

Swiderski is a gritty guy, and that grit was on full display this weekend.

He hadn’t wrestled since Feb. 1 when he beat former Iowa State teammate Jacob Frost in the OSU-ISU dual.

Swiderski re-debuted in Friday’s first round his knee taped up. That opening match, against West Virginia’s Willie McDougald, was a tight one, with Swiderski winning 2-1 coming off a stall point in the final 20 seconds.

But he seemed to get better as the tournament went on. He beat Wyoming’s Gabe Willochell 7-2 in the quarters before majoring 4 seed Maxwell Petersen 16-3 in the semis.

“It’s just like, sometimes you gotta win,” Swiderski said. “There’s film out there. Everybody knows me, everybody watches, knows what I got. It’s just like you gotta go win. If that’s the way I gotta win the first round, OK. That doesn’t look good for that guy, ya know, losing on a stall call like that. But you just have to find ways to win.”

In terms of intensity, there aren’t many more intense than Swiderski. That dual match against Frost was an example of that, as he let the Iowa State corner know about his takedown and win.

He walks out to 50 Cents’ “Many Men,” which is about sir 50 being shot and living to tell the tale. Here’s why that song resonates with Swiderski:

“I read,” Swiderski said. “I read, I listen, I don’t forget what people say. One day, Coach was talking about sometimes you gotta make yourself the dog or you walk out there like you’re the man. I like making myself the dog. I know what people have said. I like it. It fuels my fire when people are stabbing me in the back. It’s like, alright, I’ll show you. And I think I’m doing alright.”

OSU Big 12 Results

Troy Spratley (125): 1st
Jax Forrest (133): 1st
Sergio Vega (141): 1st
Casey Swiderski (149): 1st
Landon Robideau (157): 2nd
Dee Lockett (165): 2nd
Alex Facundo (174): 2nd
Zack Ryder (184): 8th
Cody Merrill (197): 3rd
Konner Doucet (HWT): 2nd

Team Scores

David Taylor’s Post Tournament Thoughts