‘The Timeline Is Now’: OSU Wrestling Wants a Team Championship, Must Go Through Penn State to Get It

STILLWATER — The only question surrounding Penn State’s dominance in the sport of wrestling is which number is more impressive.

The number 13, as in the fact that the Nittany Lions have won 13 of the last 15 team championships or the fact that the last five team championships have come by an average of 60.4 points (for context, three of the last five runner-ups didn’t even score 100).

“Over the last 15 years, hope has been probably squashed across the country that you just can’t win anywhere else,” Oklahoma State coach David Taylor said. “Well, now you can. You can win here, and as a team, we can win, and we’re focused on getting better, and our goal is to be national champions, and that’s what we’re working towards.”

Taylor played a role in squashing that hope, as he put it. He helped the Nittany Lions begin this run of dominance, wrestling for the first four national championship teams and winning two individual NCAA titles in the process.

With that kind of history, Taylor has fielded many questions about Penn State and his former coach, Cael Sanderson. For the most part, Taylor has deflected these questions, choosing to downplay whatever rivalry, real or imagined, there might be.

That quote above might be one of the more “aggressive” answers given by him on the topic of Penn State, but even then, he started off attempting to take the focus off the Nittany Lions.

“I think those are easy things (chasing Penn State) to get caught up in, right?” Taylor said. “I think for us, like we just got to keep getting better. … Our focus is not just like so laser focused at just winning. Our focus is getting better, and along the way, like you get a great measuring stick at the national tournament.

“So we had a great tournament this weekend, but that tournament is over, and now it’s on to the next thing. And now we’re preparing to be national champs next year, and that’s what our focus is going to be.”

Three Cowboy freshmen won individual national titles this season under Taylor’s leadership, marking a first in the history of the sport three freshmen accomplished the feat. The last team to produce even two freshmen champions was Penn State in 2017.

“Our goals were never to be one-time NCAA champions or take second as a team,” freshman champ Landon Robideau said. “They’ve always been all of us be four-timers and win team championships.”

In fact, that’s a big reason Robideau, a former Minnesota commit, chose to flip his pledge to the Cowboys in the first place.

“The first phone calls I had with David and Jimmy (Kennedy) and the whole coaching staff was they said they just wanted to help me win an individual national title, and they want to win a team national title,” Robideau said. “And that started this year. They weren’t looking to, I know a lot of people, they’re like, oh, all these schools, they might catch certain schools in three, four years. That wasn’t the timeline for them.

“The timeline was right now.”

Behind the trio of freshmen, the Cowboys took second with a score of 131, putting them 50.5 points behind Penn State after the Nittany Lions again broke the team scoring record.

Considering the Lions lose one of their four reigning national champions and return two runner-ups, catching these Lions will be quite the challenge. Of course, if there’s anything Taylor has proven in his first two years, it’s the ability to excel no matter the odds.

“At the beginning of the year, our team was ranked fifth,” Taylor said. “We were supposed to score like 40 points at the national tournament. No one expected our guys to do that. We did. We expected that. So I just think the surprises to the outside are surprises, but inside, like these aren’t surprises to us.”

In Taylor’s first season, the Cowboys finished third, their highest finish since 2021, with 102.5 points. That put them 74.5 points behind Penn State.

Jax Forrest, Oklahoma State’s reigning national champ at 133 pounds, talked at length on Thursday about his desire to chase something higher than an individual NCAA title. It certainly sounds like Forrest is chasing a career instead of one specific moment on the mat.

“Like what coach David was saying, like, yeah, we won nationals, that’s awesome,” Forrest said. “But now, now we want to win a team title, you know, we want to beat Penn State, and we have a great foundation. But then just keep going forward, keep getting better, and just trust in the coaches and just win it next year.”