Post-Dual Quotes: OSU vs. Northern Iowa

Head Coach John Smith

On what he told his team after the dual:
"I was a little frustrated. With four, almost five matches being scoreless in the first period. I'd almost rather my guy get taken down. I want to see the action start and things happening. It just seemed like we moseyed ourselves to seven matches and the win. It wasn't much more than that. It wasn't impressive."

On wrestling on ESPNU:
"It was good. I wish that we could have shown a little better of a match. You don't want those scoreless first periods. Nobody wants to watch that. We need to focus on taking advantage of the first period and recognizing that with three minutes it's the longest period of the match. You can't let that go. We'll get better on that. We have to."

On Dean Heil's win:
"He needed it. Those things aren't easy and you can lose if you go out there feeling sorry for yourself. It was good to see him hit a nice counter and hit a hard ride when he needed a hard ride. We've seen those matches with them. He's won a lot of tough matches like that. That's what he needs to remember. About 25 to 30 percent of those matches are close like that."

On Derek White:
"I was really encouraged by the fact that he picked up a major decision tonight. My message to him was that if you are that many points above your opponent, there needs to be a sense of urgency. When we have guys that we're wrestling that we're confident about beating, there needs to be a sense of urgency…With Derek, he scored at the 2:50 mark in the first, and that was a little bit longer than I wanted to see, but it's been a fantastic year for him."

Derek White – RJr., Heavyweight

His general thoughts on the match:
"I think we all could have done a little bit better than what we did. The first three weights came out strong and we really slowed down. That's what coach was telling us, we just need to pick it up, pick up our pace. There were four matches that had nobody score in the first period."

On how his experience last year is helping him this year:
"I was a lot smaller last year compared to this year. The weight room definitely helped a lot from that. But that experience last year definitely helped out, (it) gave me a good feel for what the competition was going to be like."

On if he is surprised with the success he is having this year:
"I kind of expected that I'd do pretty well, but I'm just enjoying it right now, taking advantage of the opportunity I got."

Oklahoma State University Athletics

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