The No. 18 ASU wrestling team lost several close matches and was defeated by No. 8 Oklahoma 32-7 on Thursday night in Wells Fargo Arena.
The Sooners grabbed an early 15-0 lead through the first four matches and never looked back, as only redshirt senior Anthony Robles (125-pound weight class) and redshirt senior Bubba Jenkins (157) were winners for the Sun Devils in the team’s home opener.
“There were a lot of matches that came down to who wanted to win, and their guys wanted to win more than ours,” ASU coach Shawn Charles said.
The night began with a string of tough losses for the Sun Devils. Junior Eric Starks lost a 2-0 decision to Tyler Caldwell at 174, junior Jake Meredith lost 8-6 in the final seconds to Erich Schmidtke at 184, and redshirt freshman Luke Macchiaroli suffered an 8-3 loss to Kendrick Hall at 197.
“It just comes back to effort,” Charles said. “I feel like tonight, our guys didn’t give us 100 percent effort in some of those close matches. The reality is, the effort wasn’t there.”
Redshirt senior Anthony Robles, ranked No. 3 nationally at 125, finally got the Sun Devils on the board with a 13-1 technical fall victory in the marquee matchup of the night against Sooner sophomore Jarrod Patterson who came in ranked No. 9.
After another hard-fought 2-0 loss by redshirt senior Ben Ashmore at 133, the Sun Devils were down 18-5 and fading quickly.
“We got taken down on the edge of the mat and at the end of periods quite a bit,” Charles said. “So obviously, we’re not wrestling well on the edge.”
Jenkins (No. 6 at 157) earned the second Sun Devil victory of the night, a close 6-5 decision over Oklahoma redshirt freshman Matt Lester (No. 13) that proved to be the final ASU win of the night.
“I loved the [atmosphere],” Jenkins said of the crowd of 807. “But I feel like our team didn’t wrestle as well because of the pressure and nervousness from such a big crowd.”
Robles, although glad to get the win in the home opener, also felt the team didn’t show their true talent out on the mat.
“I wanted the pin, but a tech’s alright,” Robles said. “Overall, I’m just a little disappointed about how we finished off. But it’s still early on in the season; we’re going to have some bad matches here and there, but we got a long way to go and there’s still plenty of time.”
Oklahoma came into the dual favored with seven starters in the national top 20. Robles said he thinks that the Sooners' high ranking might have caused the team to come out a little timid.
“I think we kind of let the hype get to us a little bit,” Robles said. “But like I said, there’s still plenty of time, and it’s a young team. We’ll bounce back.”
Jenkins also said that a lot of ASU’s wrestlers had the “deer in the headlights look,” and that the Sun Devils need to be more aggressive under the lights.
“We really thought ourselves out of the match, instead of wrestled ourselves into it,” Jenkins said.
Robles, who had his opponent fleeing the mat at various points in the match and nearly got the pin at the end of the third period, said it was a matter of mindset that hindered ASU most against OU.
“I think we’re all kind of in agreement that tonight, it was a mental thing,” Robles said. “I think a lot of the guys gave them too much respect. Once you get out on that mat, you can’t show any guy respect.”
Reach the reporter at kyle.j.newman@asu.edu
