Three Things to Watch When OSU Wrestles Stanford

Oklahoma State wrestles Stanford at Stanford on Saturday at 4 p.m. Central time. The Cardinal boasts a solid squad that includes a few All-Americans and the defending 165-pound NCAA champion. This makes for what should be a solid season-opener for the Cowboys.

Here are three things for fans to keep an eye on this Saturday.

1. 165-Wittlake vs. Griffith

We may get to see two see two NCAA champions competing here. Oklahoma State’s AJ Ferrari and Stanford’s Shane Griffith.

Wittlake, an All-American and former Big 12 champion, has been solid in his career but here’s where we get to see if he can make that leap into being a title contender this year. On paper, this is arguably the best individual match of the weekend in all of college wrestling.

2. 197-Ferrari vs. Stemmet

Really, this probably won’t be that exciting of a match. We’re talking the defending NCAA champ vs. the Pac 12 third-place finisher. But we all know AJ Ferrari will never let a match happen without some excitement, and this started Tuesday with some jawing between the two on social media.

They clearly aren’t big fans of each other and this could set us up for an intriguing match with at least a bit of a storyline going in.

3. New lineup

For a lot of spots, Oklahoma State fans know what to expect with the Cowboys as most of their guys are back from last season. 125, 133, 157, 165, 174, 184, and 197 are all basically projected to be the same from last year barring injury.

141, 149, and HWT are not.

Word on the street is in the wrestle-offs last weekend, Carter Young beat Dusty Hone at 141, Kaden Gfeller won the job at 149, and Luke Surber, who recently bulked up to heavyweight won the round-robin with Austin Harris and Konner Doucet.

I can’t confirm or deny that, but the info came from pretty solid sources. The interesting thing is we could certainly still see Hone (141) or Harris (HWT) get the start here because Surber and Young still have redshirts available and could go that route.

We’ll see how it all plays, but this should be interesting to watch play out.