OSU Wrestling Crowns Three Champions at the Lindenwood Open

Last Saturday, a small group of freshmen made the trip to Lindenwood in Saint Louis, Mo., to wrestle in the Lindenwood Open.

The core of this freshman class is in the 165-184-pound range. I talked about it in my OCU things to watch, but the formula is similar here. You really want to see who’s developing and how they’re developing.

The Cowboys had three champions crowned with Colt Denney at 165, Travis Wittlake at 174, and Anthony Montalvo at 184.

OSU brought in a lot of guys at 165 this season. Jalin Harper, Colt Denney, Gavin Stika, and Wes Ahrberg. We haven’t seen Harper yet, but Denney seems to have the edge with this group currently. He won the OCU open last week and won this as well, beating Ahrberg in the finals 7-3. Stika and Ahrberg matched up in the semifinal with Stika injury defaulting out. Here’s a look at the bracket Denney had to navigate to win.

At 174, Wittlake had another tournament win, following up his title at OCU with a second one here. Wittlake is a pretty high-level recruit and may be a notch above some of the guys he was going with here, but he looked solid. He picked up bonus points in all, but two matches and beat Iowa State’s Logan Schumacher in the final 4-0

Montalvo picked up his first college tournament win at 184. He looked similarly dominant to Wittlake as he bonused his way through the tournament. He went major, fall, tech-fall, tech-fall, major on his way to a title. He finished third at OCU last week and based on my interaction with him I would guess that left a bad taste in his mouth and that may have given him a little extra fire going into this week. It showed here.

Here are the complete results for the Cowboys.

• 141 — Bennett Sherrer (DNP)
• 157 — Hanyu Qiu (DNP)
• 165 — Colton Denney (1st), Wes Ahrberg (2nd), Gavin Stika (6th-Inj Def)
• 174 — Travis Wittlake (1st), Laquan Jackson (DNP)
• 184 — Anthony Montavo (1st)