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PrintMissouri 174-pound wrestler Ben Askren showed how at ease the Missouri wrestling team was about the Big 12 Conference Championships when he walked in 5 minutes late to the Tigers’ media day wearing a tie-dyed shirt and a red bandana .
His teammates snickered and joked with him, and one of the wrestlers yelled out, “It’s OK, it’s his lucky shirt.”
Askren, a junior, ditched the bandana and switched shirts with co-captain Jeff Foust before stepping to the podium.
The Tigers wrestlers spoke about how confident they are about the tournament, which will be held Saturday in Ames, Iowa. The always-vocal Askren, who is 38-0 this season, spoke about how he feels he will finish at the tournament.
“I am very confident,” Askren said. “I’ve beat all the guys in the conference of course...I know they want to beat me, but I don’t see them showing it in the match. They act scared and are always backing away. They have nothing to lose, so they should just come at me.”
Askren was as confident in his teammates as himself.
“I think we can have the most national qualifiers since I’ve been here,” Askren said. “And that includes my redshirt freshman year when we had seven. I think we can have 10 people go to nationals this year.”
Missouri earned that confidence by winning its past five matches and finishing the season at No. 7 nationally.
The Tigers will still be challenged because all five of the Big 12 wrestling programs have top 10 rankings.
Coach Brian Smith said he hopes his wrestlers are peaking at the right time to win the tournament.
“I’m excited about the tournament,” Smith said. “This is the most prepared any MU wrestling team has ever been. We really turned it around at the end of the year. Oklahoma was the turning point and Chattanooga was when we really stepped it up.”
Missouri defeated Oklahoma 17-16 in a home dual Feb. 5 before dominating Chattanooga 37-6 on the road Feb. 18.
“College wrestling is a very demanding sport,” Smith said. “We pushed them really hard for a while and then would back off. I think that we are peaking at the right time and all of our wrestlers are healthy.”
Smith also said the freshmen will not have a hard time at the meet.
“I’m not worried about the younger guys because the way I scheduled our season,” Smith said. “We went up to the (Clif Keen) open in Las Vegas and competed against 52 schools. That’s a lot more teams than the young guys will see at this meet. And they all did well at the meet in Vegas, beating some of the best SEC wrestlers, who have already qualified for nationals.”
SMART BROTHERS: Sophomore 133-pounder Tyler McCormick and senior 141-pounder Chris McCormick were selected to the All-Academic Big 12 Conference team this week.
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