Cowboy Wrestling Hosts No. 19 Stanford in Season Opener

Friday, November 7

Stillwater, Okla.

7 p.m.

Oklahoma State University

Stanford

November 05, 2025 | Cowboy Wrestling

Notes

The Basics
The No. 5 Oklahoma State wrestling team opens the second season of the David Taylor era with a home contest against the No. 19 Stanford Cardinal. The Cowboys come into the dual having won 25 straight home openers dating to 1999.

On the Air
Friday's dual is scheduled for a 7 p.m. CT start and will be available for streaming on ESPN+ with J. Carl Guymon and Hardell Moore on the call. Rex Holt also returns as the voice of Cowboy wrestling to provide live radio coverage, which will be carried on Hot 93.7 KSPI-FM. Live stats and results can be found on okstate.statbroadcast.com, as well as trackwrestling.com.

The Series
The Cowboys and Cardinal have met just three times. Oklahoma State has handled the Cardinal in all three meetings, outscoring Stanford by a combined score of 95-16. The Cowboys took the opening meeting in 2016, 41-0, and have since won the past two contests in 2021 and 2023, 29-7 and 25-9, respectively. While David Taylor has never coached against the Cardinal, Stanford head coach Chris Ayers has faced the Cowboys twice in his career while leading the Princeton Tigers, losing both contests to John Smith's Cowboys.

About the Cowboys
The David Taylor era is in full swing after a third-place finish with a pair of individual champions at the NCAA Championships in March. The Cowboys return six NCAA qualifiers and added three more out of the portal, including Richard Figueroa II, Casey Swiderski and Alex Facundo. Despite losing NCAA Champions Wyatt Hen- drickson and Dean Hamiti Jr., the Cowboys are primed for another deep run in March.
Affectionately known as "Sparky," Troy Spratley is back and ready for another deep run this season in the Cowboys' leadoff spot. A 2025 national finalist, Spratley holds down the 125-pound slot and is ranked second headed into the season behind last season's NCAA champion.
The Cowboy lineup this season features multiple transfers who are set to make immediate impacts, including 2024 national champion Richard Figueroa II, 2024 All-American Casey Swiderski, Alex Facundo and Zack Ryder. Konner Doucet retakes the reins at heavyweight after sitting behind Hendrickson in 2025, while other Cowboy veterans Teague Travis and Carter Young aim to get back to the NCAA Championships.
Coach Taylor's first freshman class will undoubtedly leave its mark on the 2025-26 squad. The hometown hero LaDarion "Dee" Lockett sets out to put the country on notice at 165 pounds. Other freshman that could see action in the lineup include Minnesota native Landon Robideau, Arizona product Sergio Vega and California's Ronnie Ramirez.
Last year's highly touted freshman Cody Merrill comes into the season ranked 10th at 197 pounds after going 12-2 last season with three wins over ranked opponents in various tournaments. Benjamin Mower also competes for that 197 pound spot.

An Oklahoma State Win Would...
• Make OSU 1-0 for the sixth straight season.
• Make David Taylor 2-0 in season openers.
• Mark OSU's first wins this season against a ranked opponent.
• Improve OSU's record against Stanford to 4-0 overall, and 3-0 in Gallagher-Iba Arena.
• Give OSU its 26th straight win in its home opener.
• Make OSU 23-2 against ranked opponents since the 2023-24 season.
• Improve OSU's record to 44-5 in its past 49 duals.
• Improve David Taylor's record against Stanford to 1-0.
• Improve OSU to 8-0 at Gallagher-Iba Arena under David Taylor.
• Improve OSU to 14-1 in dual matches under David Taylor.
• Improve OSU to 11-1 against ranked opponents under David Taylor.

The Opening Act
David Taylor's opening season for the Cowboys brought the Cowboy faithful a new hope. Taylor's Cowboys dominated the competition by going 13-1 in dual action, finishing the season unblemished at home in seven matches and winning 10 matches against ranked opponents, including Oregon State, Arizona State, Oklahoma, Virginia Tech, NC State, West Virginia, Northern Iowa, Iowa State, Missouri and Little Rock in dual action. Taylor also led the Cowboys to a Big
12 title for the first time since 2021. On the biggest stage of collegiate wrestling, Oklahoma State had a pair of Cowboys, Wyatt Hendrickson and Dean Hamiti Jr., crowned national champions. It marked the first time since 2016 the Cowboys had multiple NCAA champions in the same season. Taylor's Cowboys never left the top three in the rankings, climbing as high as two in the polls.

Hey Now, You're an All-Star
On November 1, Zack Ryder and Casey Swiderski competed in the NWCA All-Star Classic. Casey Swiderski led off the night for the Cowboys by facing Michigan's three-time All-American Lachlan McNeil. Swiderski controlled the match and nabbed the lone takedown of the bout to win, 4-2. The win vaulted Swiderski up to No. 2 in the poll at 149 pounds. Ryder dominated what was considered the match of the weekend, as he took down Maryland's Jaxon Smith at 184 pounds. Ryder collected the only bonus-point win of the event with his major decision over Smith, 14-4. He took down Smith four times and did not allow a takedown. Smith, a three-time national qualifier, had only given up bonus points twice in his career - once to Carter Starocci and the other to Aaron Brooks, who have nine national titles between them. Ryder's win turned heads around the country, and it was seen in the polls as he climbed to fourth at 184 pounds.

The One-Two Punch
The Cowboys have one of, if not the most, vaunted top opening lineups in the country with Troy Spratley and Richard Figueroa II. Spratley, a returning NCAA finalist from last season comes into the 2025 season ranked second, while his counterpart on-deck is ranked eighth in the initial poll. Spratley's incredible season in 2024-25 included five wins over top five opponents, gaining bonus points for the Cowboys in over half of his matches as the leadoff man. Incoming transfer Richard Figueroa II takes over the reins at 133 pounds after a dominant career at Arizona State, where he won a national title at 125 pounds in 2024. This is Figueroa's first season competing at 133 pounds, but as it shows in the polls, he's still a force to be reckoned with.

New Kids On the Block
David Taylor took the recruiting world by storm, as he brought in the second ranked recruiting class in the country entering his second season at the helm. The Cowboys led the nation with eight signees ranked inside FloWrestling's Top 100 Big Board. The group is spearheaded by blue-chip prospects LaDarion "Dee" Lockett, Landon Robideau and Sergio Vega, who make up half of the top six overall spots. Of the 10 wrestlers in the class, six are in-state products while the others hail from Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arizona and California. The full list includes Kruz Goff, Ishmael Guerrero, Beau Hickman, Austin Johnson, Lockett, Ronnie Ramirez, Robideau, Kody Routledge, Ethan Teague, and Vega.

The Douce(t) is loose
A familiar face for Cowboy fans, Konner Doucet is back in the lineup for the 2025 season after sitting behind Hodge Trophy winner Wyatt Hendrickson last season. Doucet comes into the season ranked ninth. The two-time NCAA qualifier is primed for a breakout season after going 1-0 in his only dual action against Air Force last season and collecting four wins at the Michigan State Open where he took first.

The Power of the Pivot
The Cowboys brought in transfers Richard Figueroa II, Casey Swiderski, Alex Facundo, Zack Ryder and Gary Steen to bolster the lineup this season, and if last year's transfers are any indication of what they can do in David Taylor's program, the sky is the limit for those five. Last year's transfers that started for the Cowboys were Caleb Fish, Cam Amine, Dean Hamiti Jr. and Wyatt Hendrickson. All four of them earned All-America status and two of them went on to win national titles.

Wrestling's House of Horrors
No venue in America has a richer wrestling tradition
than Gallagher-Iba Arena, home of the Oklahoma State wrestling program since 1939. In its beginning as Gallagher Hall, the gymnasium was named for Ed Gallagher, but when renovations were completed in January 1988, it was renamed Gallagher-Iba Arena to honor the late Mr. Henry P. Iba, Oklahoma State's legendary basketball coach. Alongside 54 NCAA championship banners, Gallagher and Iba's names have looked over Oklahoma State's historic venue for nearly 40 years.
Since 1939, Oklahoma State has captured 25 NCAA team titles, completed 45 perfect campaigns at home and won over 90% of its duals inside Gallagher-Iba Arena. The building's opening coincided with the longest home unbeaten streak in program history, as the Pokes won their first 37 duals inside GIA as part of a 67-dual unbeaten streak at home. That stretch still stands as the program's longest home unbeaten streak, as OSU never suffered defeat from 1933 to February 1951. Oklahoma State's next-longest home unbeaten streak occurred from the 1959 finale to the middle of the 1967 season, going undefeated for 57 duals in a row. Not far behind, the Cowboys won 51 consecutive duals inside Gallagher-Iba Arena from 1986-1993, good for the third-longest such streak in program history. More recently, John Smith guided the Cowboys to a 26-dual home winning streak from 2018-2022. Not long after the streak was snapped, Oklahoma State defeated South Dakota State on February 4, 2022, for the program's 500th victory inside the venue.

The Home of Wrestling
Oklahoma State is the gold standard in the college wrestling world. On the national level, the Cowboys have won 34 NCAA team titles, crowned 145 NCAA individual champions and earned 492 All-America honors. No other program comes close to those astounding numbers. It's a similar story on the conference level, with OSU winning 56 team titles and Cowboy wrestlers combining for 297 individual championships.
From an individual perspective, any list of the greatest wrestlers in NCAA history must include Oklahoma State's Yojiro Uetake, who was a perfect 57-0 with three NCAA titles, and Pat Smith, the first four-time NCAA champion in history. Pat's older brother, John Smith, was a two-time NCAA champion for the Cowboys and went on to win six straight world gold medals from 1987-92. His OSU teammate, Kenny Monday, also won gold in 1988 and 1989 as part of his four world medals. That group is just part of Oklahoma State's consistent representation on the Olympic stage every four years. Since 1924, 32 Oklahoma State wrestlers have fought their way to Olympic team membership a total of 41 times, with nine athletes winning 11 gold medals. All told, 40 members of the Cowboy wrestling family have been inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, the most in the country.

NCAA Team Championships
1. Oklahoma State 34
2. Iowa 24
3. Penn State 13

NCAA Individual Champions
1. Oklahoma State 145
2. Iowa 85
3. Iowa State 71

NCAA All-Americans
1. Oklahoma State 492
2. Iowa 367
3. Iowa State 310

Olympians
1. Oklahoma State 41
2. Iowa 23
3. Oklahoma 22