Did Cowboy Wrestling get ‘Carver-Hawkeyed’ in Iowa?

There’s pretty much no other way to put it. The Cowboys did not wrestle their best Sunday in their 20-12 loss to Iowa in Carver Hawkeye arena. Coach John Smith gave his assessment to PFB on Tuesday, letting us know some of his thoughts on the dual.

He had a lot of different takes on it stating that “It was a really poor effort,” that he thinks the team possibly just isn’t as good as he and others originally thought, and he hasn’t felt the full team has put together a solid dual meet yet.

Smith did bring up the point that Dean Heil was the only Cowboy in the dual that has wrestled at Iowa and when he did it was on the football field. So, no one on the team had ever experienced a dual inside the storied Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

But that’s not an excuse that John Smith wants to hear anytime soon. Those tough environments are something competitors should look forward to according to Smith.

Still, there is no doubt that Carver-Hawkeye is wild and has had an incredible impact on some of the best wrestlers ever to come through OSU.

Experience what it's like to take the mat inside Carver-Hawkeye Arena. pic.twitter.com/VrQvP7aIeS

— FloWrestling (@FloWrestling) January 17, 2018

The announced attendance at the dual was 13,485. OSU has only beat that number once and it was last year against Penn State. The second-closest OSU has been to that was the 10,082 crowd all the way back in Bedlam of 2001.

Iowa’s fans and that arena really create an incredibly tough place to wrestle.

In the 2011-2012 season Jordan Oliver was the top-ranked wrestler in the country, defending NCAA champ, and had basically been pinning his way through the season to that point. Then, out of nowhere, he was upset by a sophomore Tony Ramos. Ramos turned out to be a really solid wrestler, but no one on earth at the time would’ve projected to win the match.

Josh Kindig tweeted this about it. Read through some of the comments under it from some of the guys there and check out some of the other video’s. Pretty incredible.

Craziest, loudest experience I've ever had in my life was sophomore year wrestling in Carver right before my match when my current teammate @T_Ram133 stared down & took out my dude @that_dude_JO in OT Rideout…@the_GOER_ was talking to me and all could hear was his thoughts?? https://t.co/bv0e5NbXcM

— Josh Kindig (@Kinudig_it) January 17, 2018

Kendall Cross won an Olympic Gold medal and is an all-time OSU great, but in a match here with Tom Brands completely got destroyed in Carver. In fairness, Tom Brands was an incredibly good wrestler and a gold medalist himself, but you wouldn’t have expected Cross to just get hammered like that.

Was it just the environment that got to the Pokes? Tough to know and based on Smith’s reaction he’s not really certain what all it is/was, but there is no doubt the environment at Carver-Hawkeye is a difficult one.