John Smith Provides Some Details on the Cowboy Challenge Tournament

The Oklahoma State wrestling schedule was released Wednesday, and one of the biggest events listed is the Cowboy Challenge tournament on Feb. 14.

Teams coming to Stillwater for the event are the University of Central Oklahoma, Missouri, Wyoming and West Virginia.

The release from OSU stated the following.

OSU will host the Cowboy Challenge tournament, which will consist of wrestlers from West Virginia, Wyoming, Missouri and Central Oklahoma along with the Cowboys. The tournament is set to begin at 9 a.m. with the finals taking place at 1 p.m. and being broadcasted on ESPN+. 

[okstate.com]

OSU coach John Smith was asked a few questions on the event at a media availability and provided some more details on it.

The tournament will include wrestlers from each program in attendance along with a few other entrants from each team that will create an eight-man bracket.

The tournament will start with the quarterfinals, and each wrestler who moves on to the semifinals will place at the tournament. The winners of the quarterfinal matches, like in any other tournament, will naturally meet in the semifinals. Then the winners of the semifinal will wrestle for first and second, and the losers will wrestle for third and fourth. There will be no wrestle-backs for losers of the first round matches, meaning if a wrestler loses in the quarterfinals, he is done.

Smith said that his original plan was to have duals with each of these teams at some point during the season. But with the scheduling constraints because of COVID-19, he was unable to find dates that worked to wrestle Missouri, Wyoming and other teams in standard duals. So this became the solution to get each of these teams a few matches and on each others’ schedules.