Feeling right at home

As Missouri 174-pounder Ben Askren walked onto the floor of the Hearnes Center minutes before the Tigers’ match against Pittsburgh on Thursday night, he stopped to look around at the crowd. Since his freshman year, Askren, now a senior and top-ranked as the defending national champion in his weight class, said he has been hoping the word would spread about the Missouri men’s wrestling team, also top-ranked in the country.

After a moment, Askren smiled and waved as his team was introduced. At that time, he said, he finally felt like the Columbia community was there to support the Tigers.

“I was really excited they came out,” Askren said. “We’ve been wanting them to come for a long time now, and I feel like we finally got them. It was a little surprising because it’s over Christmas break when not many students are here.”

The Tigers, who improved to 4-0 with a 35-9 victory in their first match as the nation’s top team, drew a record crowd of 2,494 at the Hearnes Center. If the record-breaking crowd made Askren nervous, he didn’t show it. Wrestling against No. 2-ranked Keith Gavin of Pittsburgh, Askren recorded a fall in the second period.

“He has a style that’s so hard to wrestle against,” Gavin said. “You can’t even make a gameplan for it, because you don’t know what’s he’s going to do.”

The win was the 129th of Askren’s career, just two off former Missouri wrestler Wes Roper’s record of 131. The match also marked Askren’s second fall against Gavin, who said he came out with a “nothing-to-lose” attitude. Askren pinned Gavin at the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational on Dec. 3.

“For him to dominate at this level is just amazing,” Gavin said. “He’s a special wrestler. He’s probably one of the best ever.”

Unlike some of his recent opponents, Gavin didn’t shy away from the action to to avoid the fall against Askren. Instead, he tried to battle last year’s Dan Hodge Trophy winner. After recording the fall, Askren tapped Gavin on the shoulder to get his attention.

“He came right after me,” Askren said. “I really appreciated it. I wanted to tell him I liked the way he wrestled.”

The match against Pittsburgh was Missouri’s first at home this season. Tigers sophomore 184-pounder Raymond Jordan said it felt different to have a crowd cheering for him rather than against him.

“It made me a little nervous,” Jordan said. “We’ve gone on the road and had some duals where the crowd as been against us. That made it good to come home with a lot of people behind us. It gives you a good feeling, but makes you kind of nervous at the same time because the crowd was so big.”

The crowd got their first chance to make noise when Missouri’s John Olanowski (125 pounds) recorded a near fall at the end of the first period in the night’s first match, which resulted in a Tigers victory.

After the period’s conclusion, referee Matt Zeitz of Jefferson City walked to the scorer’s table to request a louder buzzer for the end of each period.

“I’m going to need a warning,” Zeitz told the scorer’s table. “It’s too loud in here to hear that horn.”

Missouri prepared for the record-breaking attendance. Before the match, the Tigers showed the crowd a video featuring Missouri coach Brian Smith on the videoboard. During the instructional video, Smith went through the rules and scoring of wrestling so people attending for the first time would have a sense of what exactly was going on.