Beavers Hit The Road For Two Duals

The Beavers are unbeaten in Pac-10 duals this season.

Photo: OSU Athletics

CORVALLIS - Oregon State returns to the Rocky Mountain region this weekend, as the 19th-ranked Beavers (9-1 overall, 3-0 Pacific-10) will wrestle non-conference dual meets at Wyoming (1-5) on Saturday afternoon and Northern Colorado (3-4) on Saturday evening.

It’s OSU’s second trip to the Rockies this season; the Beavers swept four dual meets at Colorado Mines’ Jack Hancock Duals in November.

“We go back to Colorado and Wyoming, and we started out the season there so it’s going back there and getting a couple more meets in and keeping things rolling,” OSU head coach Jim Zalesky said.

“We’ll keep looking for the things we’re stressing as a coaching staff - being aggressive, putting a lot of points on the scoreboard, using our conditioning, using our shape in matches and just wrestling hard for seven minutes.”

Oregon State is coming off a 23-9 win over Cal State-Fullerton last Sunday that kept the Beavers unbeaten in Pac-10 duals this season and gave them a nine-meet home winning streak over the past two seasons.

With the win, OSU maintained its ranking at No. 19 in this week’s National Wrestling Coaches Association poll; the Beavers are the only Pac-10 team in the top 25.

Again this week, there are three Beavers in the national rankings.

Heavyweight Ty Watterson is 13th in the NWCA poll and 12th in the Amateur Wrestling News rankings. This season, Watterson is 16-4 with six pins.

Jeremy Larson is ranked 18th by the NWCA and 17th by AWN at 174 pounds. This season, he’s 18-5 with four pins.

Kyle Larson is ranked 19th by the NWCA at 141 pounds. This season, he’s 17-5 with a team-high seven pins.

In the Pac-10 rankings, Watterson and both Larsons maintained their No. 2 rankings in their weight classes and Beaver 133-pounder Bobby Pfennigs moved up spot to second in his weight class.

OSU 184-pounder Kyle Bressler climbed one place to third in his weight class and 149-pounder Derek Kipperberg remained third, while 125-pounder Jake Gonzales stayed in fourth and both 157-pounder Keegan Davis and 197-pounder Travis Gardner remained fifth.

Wyoming (1-5) won one of three meets last weekend at the Virginia Duals, beating The Citadel 26-13 and losing to Drexel 28-9 and Virginia Tech 20-17.

Northern Colorado (3-4) beat Utah Valley State 30-13 at home last week.

The Bears have two nationally ranked wrestlers, as 141-pounder Kenny Hashimoto is ranked 14th by the NWCA and 11th by AWN, and heavyweight Reece Hopkin is ranked 19th by the NWCA

Adding comments to these stories has been disabled. View the current sports stories Salem-News Sports