NCAA wrestling championships: Focused on title, Oklahoma State's Daton Fix earns 100th win
TULSA — Daton Fix reached a career milestone, but not the one he’s chasing this week.
The Oklahoma State senior won his 100th career wrestling match in the second round of the NCAA Championships on Thursday night at the BOK Center, but the three-time national runner-up is hunting that elusive hardware that only champions are granted.
“A hundred wins, it’s not easy to do,” said Fix, who has gone 100-4 in becoming the 45th Cowboy wrestler to reach the century mark. “It’s a big accomplishment, but I’m worried more about the next three matches than I am the last 100.”
Fix, from nearby Sand Springs, gave the hometown crowd a thrill early on Thursday, landing a first-period pin in his opening match. He added an 8-4 decision over Northern Iowa’s Kyle Biscoglia for win No. 100 in the evening session.
Fix will face 10th-seeded Lucas Byrd of Illinois in Friday’s quarterfinal.
Junior Dustin Plott, the No. 5 seed at 174 pounds, was the only other Cowboy to win both matches on Thursday, and he did it in style.
The Tuttle native found himself trailing 4-1 early in the second period against 12th-seeded Aaron Olmos of Oregon State, who had defeated Plott 9-4 in a dual earlier this year. But Plott escaped and got two takedowns later in the second, then added an escape, a takedown and a riding time point to close it out.
More:Top storylines & how to watch OU, Oklahoma State wrestling at 2023 NCAA Championships
“Nationals is a tough tournament. No gimme matches,” Plott said. “I came prepared, ready for two wars, and that’s what I got.”
The Cowboys ended the day with five wrestlers still alive in consolations. Victor Voinovich (149), Kaden Gfeller (157), Wyatt Sheets (165), Travis Wittlake (184) and Luke Surber (197) each went 1-1 in their matches Thursday.
At 125, Reece Witcraft suffered a head injury in his consolation match and could not continue. At 141, Carter Young was limited by a knee injury suffered at the Big 12 Championships.
“We’ve got seven alive and that’s important,” said OSU coach John Smith, whose team is tied for 17th with 10 points. “We need to make sure we win tough matches. That’s what we’ve done all season. We’re not a team that’s gonna get bonus points. We’re a team that’s gonna win tough matches.”
Penn State leads Big Ten charge
There were no real surprises atop the team standings after the first day.
Penn State scored 26 points to hold the lead over Iowa at 21.5. The Big Ten Conference had three of the top four teams and six of the top nine.
Big 12 member Missouri made a late charge to get into third place, breaking up a cluster of three Big Ten teams at the top. Missouri has 17.5 points with Minnesota and North Carolina State tied for fourth at 16.5.
More:Oklahoma State wrestler Kaden Gfeller 'grateful' to chase NCAA goal with daughter watching
Heritage Hall double-dip
Back in February 2017, as teammates at Heritage Hall, Kaden Gfeller and Rodrick Mosley won individual state wrestling championships at State Fair Arena in Oklahoma City on the same day.
On Thursday afternoon, the two were on the mat for first-round matches at the NCAA Championships at the same time.
Mosley, a redshirt senior at Gardner Webb, was the No. 24 seed at 165 pounds and suffered a difficult 1-0 loss to Stanford’s Shane Griffith, the 2021 national champion at the weight.
Gfeller, a super-senior at 157 for OSU, edged George Mason’s Peter Pappas 7-5 in sudden-victory tiebreaker.
Gfeller gave up an escape in the first tiebreaker, but scored a takedown with four seconds left in the period. Starting neutral in the second tiebreaker, Gfeller avoided Pappas’ attacks to secure the win.
Gfeller later lost his second-round match to fall into the consolation bracket. Mosley was eliminated on Thursday night.
Sooners struggle after early win
Oklahoma picked up a victory in its third match of the day when ninth-seeded Mosha Schwartz earned a 4-1 decision over Iowa State’s Casey Swiderski, the No. 24 seed at 141 pounds.
But that essentially ended the highlights for the Sooners.
The rest of OU’s contingent, all seeded 18th or higher in their brackets, went winless in Thursday’s opening round. Schwartz was defeated in the second round.
And in consolation action, the Sooners kept four more alive, with Wyatt Henson at 133, Mitch Moore at 149, Tate Picklo at 174 and heavyweight Josh Heindselman.
Picklo and Heindselman each advanced with major decisions in their elimination matches.
Now, OU coach Lou Rosselli and the Sooners must turn their focus to fighting through the losers’ bracket, which was an area they performed well in two weeks ago at the Big 12 Championships.
“Nobody wants to be in the wrestlebacks, but at the end of the day, when your seeds are 20th or 25th, you just gotta go out there and keep fighting,” Rosselli said. “If you keep doing that, then good things will happen to you.
“You gotta keep taking more risks. Some of them didn’t take enough risks. If you don’t take any risks, I don’t see how you can win at this level.”
More:Oklahoma wrestler Tate Picklo 'super-grateful for where I am' as NCAA Championships arrive
West Virginia’s Cardinale rolls to quarterfinals
Killian Cardinale appears to be healthy.
The West Virginia 125-pounder was the top seed in the Big 12 Championships two weeks ago, but forfeited both of his matches because of injury.
Despite a 12-1 record and top-15 national ranking, Cardinale fell to the No. 28 seed at the NCAAs, and wasted no time proving that was a mistake.
He opened with a 3-2 decision over fifth-seeded Caleb Smith of Appalachian State, then won an 8-3 decision over Wyoming’s Jore Volk, the No. 21 seed.
Cardinale wasn’t the only low seed to pull a couple of upsets at 125. Virginia Tech’s Eddie Ventresca won twice as the No. 27 seed.
The lowest seed of the tournament to advance to the quarterfinals was Michigan State’s Caleb Fish, who is the No. 29 seed at 165. He is now one win away from securing All-America status.
BOK Center proving itself
While the BOK Center has hosted a number of large events since opening in 2008, it hadn’t yet seen anything as unique as the NCAA wrestling championships.
With 330 wrestlers from dozens of schools across the country in the building Thursday, Tulsa’s arena held up well.
A few rows of the lower seating sections had to be removed to accommodate the eight-mat setup used on the first day of the event, but a near-capacity crowd of 15,199 filled the seats early for the action. And 15,342 attended the evening session.
The BOK has been home to the Big 12 wrestling championships the past seven years, but that event pales in comparison to this.
“I think they did a good job,” said Rosselli, who understands the operational differences between the Big 12 and NCAA championships. “I wasn’t sure how it was gonna look, but they took some things out, made space, made some accommodations. So far, so good.”
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: NCAA wrestling championships: Oklahoma State's Daton Fix gets win 100
