Cowboy Wrestling: Previewing the Reno Tournament of Champions

The Cowboys will be sending a crew down to the Reno Tournament of Champions this Sunday, so let’s preview the event and get a look at what to expect from OSU here.

The big story of the entire tournament is Daton Fix making his college debut. 

Fix was prepping for and wrestling in the U23 World Championships over most of the first part of the season so has yet to wrestle a match in his current redshirt season. This is a pretty tough tournament, so he’ll have some tests, but should be the favorite to win it. The thing to watch is his mat wrestling. He’s incredible on his feet — there’s no doubting his ability there — but he hasn’t wrestled top D1 talent on the mat though so follow that closely.

Some of the other weights to follow closely are 141, 149, 165 and 197.

141 is the toughest weight at the tournament and a big test for freshman Kaden Gfeller. You can’t expect him to win here, but you want to see him wrestle well. He’s looked good so far early in his freshman season.

149 won’t be as tough as 141, but Boo Lewallen is now eligible to start. Smith hasn’t declared anything, but everything points to Boo eventually becoming the starter. It has the potential to be an all OSU final with him and Moran if they’re dropped in on opposite sides of the bracket. There will be some solid competition here though. A number of ranked wrestlers and even an NCAA Champ in Tsirtsis from Arizona State. This may be the most interesting weight to follow from an OSU fan standpoint outside of the Fix debut.

At 165, I think Joe Smith here is interesting. He’s redshirting and is up at a new weight. 165 isn’t extremely tough here so he should win it. My big question is if this is a permanent weight change or if he’s going back to 157 next year?

Marsden is on his way down to 184, but here he’ll be wrestling at 197. Even though he’s up a weight this will still impact his resume for a Big 12 tournament seed and shot at a NCAA qual. if he becomes the starter at 184. His performance here is pretty important. 197 is a tough weight here though and he’ll be a bit undersized since he’s already started making his cut.

Here’s who will be going at each weight.

125-Daton Fix-Eli Hale-Jet Taylor

133-Gary Wayne Harding

141-Kaden Gfeller

149-Boo Lewallen, Tristan Moran, Josh Solomon

165-Joe Smith

184-Austin Harris, Bear Hughes

197-Andrew Marsden

285-Ethan Anderson, Blake Andrews

The only way to watch is on Flowrestling.com and it requires a subscription. The OSU wrestling Twitter typically provides match scores and we will do a recap Sunday evening.

Two final notes.

1. Smith said on the coaches show that Eli Hale will be transferring. They don’t know where at the moment and he said it could be a D1 school or potentially UCO. The decision seemed to be one that both sides were in agreement on as it is probably the best thing for Hale and would give him an opportunity to start in his last year. He could start at a lot of D1 schools. Being an Oklahoman with a lot of friends connected to the UCO program I’d personally I’d like to see him go to there and help them out though.

2. Wyatt Sheets is injured. Smith didn’t give details but did mention he was injured and out for this tournament.