LARAMIE, Wyo. (Feb. 4, 2020) – The Wyoming wrestling team returns home for a pair of important Big 12 matchups this week as the Cowboys welcome Fresno State Thursday at 7 p.m., in the UniWyo Sports Complex and No. 7 Oklahoma State Saturday for another 7 p.m., dual. The Oklahoma State dual will be held in the Arena-Auditorium.
"We're excited to be home for two straight duals and to showcase our team to our fans," said Head Coach Mark Branch.
"It's a great opportunity to push for these last few home duals, we haven't had a whole lot this season so this is definitely the highlight of our home schedule. We really want to get a huge crowd in the AA hosting Oklahoma State. It's important to our program and our team to have our fans support us."
The Pokes (7-7, 3-1 Big 12) have won three consecutive duals as they are coming off an 18-13 victory last week at Oregon State. Dewey Krueger clinched the win with his 8-3 victory at 157 pounds over Logan Meek in the final match of the meet. UW won six of the bouts against the Beavers, including a top-15 matchup between No. 8 Montorie Bridges and 15th-ranked Devan Turner at 133 pounds. Bridges won 7-4 to earn his third top-25 victory of the season.
The Cowboys are 2-0 this season in home duals, dominating CSU Bakersfield January 24 in Laramie, 34-3 and besting Utah Valley Jan. 26, 37-9 in Green River in the outreach match. The Pokes recorded 10 bonus-point victories in the two duals, including five falls, four of which, came against UVU. Wyoming won 17-of-20 matchups in the two contests.
Fresno State enters the week with an 8-7 record in dual meets, including a 3-1 mark in Big 12 matchups. Thursday will be the Bulldogs' first true road dual of the season. Oklahoma State enters the week at No. 11 in the NWCA poll and is 10-2 overall, including a 4-1 mark in Big 12 duals and has won three consecutive. OSU will also wrestle Air Force earlier in the day Saturday.
"Oklahoma State is wrestling exceptionally as of late, so we're going to have to wrestle our best in these two duals. Fresno State upset us last year. We had one of our best dual seasons ever last season and we went out there and they had a great environment and beat us. Now we have an opportunity this year to get them back at our place and try to even the score. So we need a good week of preparation and practice, a lot of focus this week, these are two really important conference duals that we need to perform well at," continued Branch.
UW remained fairly steady in this week's individual rankings. Bridges continues to be the top-ranked Cowboy as he remains ranked at No. 8 by four publications at 133 pounds. At 149, Jaron Jensen dropped to 32nd by TrackWrestling while Krueger stayed at No. 31 at 157 by the OpenMat. Hayden Hastings jumped up one spot to No. 11 at 174 pounds in the TrackWrestling poll while Tate Samuelson moves to No. 30 at 184 pounds by OpenMat. At 197, Stephen Buchanan stayed steady at No. 23 and No. 24, respectively in the Flo and OpenMat polls while Brian Andrews rounds-out the rankings for the Pokes at Heavyweight, coming in at No. 18 in both the WIN Magazine and OpenMat polls.
The first 1,000 fans in attendance at Saturday's contest will receive a free t-shirt while free Chick-fil-A will be provided to students that attend.
As always, fans can watch the duals via web stream at FloWrestling. Live match updates can be found on TrackWrestling and on Twitter @WyoWrestle. Fans can also access links to coverage at gowyo.com/coverage.
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