A strong Virginia Tech team that has done more than enough to earn a #6 national ranking is about to find out how it will do against #3.

The Hokies will travel to Stillwater, Oklahoma, on Wednesday to prepare for one of the season’s better first-half showdowns against Oklahoma State on Thursday at sold-out Gallagher-Iba Arena.

Name it and this match should have it — top-five matchups, swing bouts and maybe three matches in which one team or the other will be relatively heavy favorites.

“I think if you look up and down the dual meet, there's going to be a lot of matches that are going to be tight matches … highly contested,” Virginia Tech coach Tony Robie said Tuesday. “If we want to come out on top, we've got to be able to win those close matches. 

“And there's a bunch of them. There are maybe only three matches in the whole dual meet where there are heavy favorites. We've got to figure out a way to win those one-point, two-point, one-takedown matches, and we're going to have to do it in multiple places.”

The Hokies are coming off a fourth-place finish at the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational, at which Oklahoma State walked away as the victor with 192 points. Robie was pleased with that performance and said it gave some of his younger wrestlers exposure to high-level competition.

“But we’re going to experience a different kind of atmosphere in Stillwater, and that's something we haven't dealt with this year,” Robie said. “That's something that I'm anxious to see how our guys handle, how our coaches handle, and we've got to make sure that we keep our composure and we don't get distracted by things that aren't necessarily going to help our performance.

“We need to stay dialed into what we need to be dialed into in order to compete the way we're capable of competing. So that's really, I think, going to be critically important to the outcome of this dual meet.”

Intensity will be stoked right from the start as Virginia Tech’s #4 Eddie Ventresca, second at Cliff Keen, faces #2 Troy Spratley, third at the CKLV, at 125. 

“Obviously, Eddie Ventresca is competing at the level that we knew that he was capable of competing at,” Robie said. “I thought he had a good tournament, lost to a good, tough competitor (Purdue’s #1-ranked Matt Ramos) in the finals, but he beat some good guys along the way. More than anything, we’re just pleased with how he's competing right now, so he's doing a really good job.”

Two key bouts follow as Virginia Tech’s Connor McGonagle faces Reece Witcraft in a #12 vs. #18 test at 133, and Virginia Tech’s #12 Sam Latona meets #4 Tagen Jamison at 141. Tech’s defending NCAA champ Caleb Henson will be looking for bonus points against #15 Carter Young after winning the 149-pound crown at the CKLV, where he toppled Nebraska’s Ridge Lovett in sudden victory, 6-3, avenging a loss to Lovett in the 2023 CKLV finals.

“I think it's just the way he approaches things, and his ability to process information and make adjustments, and when he feels a guy, he kind of has the ability to figure out where they're good, what they're good at, what they want to try to get to, what maybe their vulnerabilities are, and how to attack those things,” Robie said about Henson. 

“So he's really good at figuring out throughout the course of a match. And I think the second time he wrestles somebody, third time he wrestles somebody, he's able to distance himself a little bit more.”

Another toss-up comes at 157 between VT’s #13 Rafael Hipolito and OSU’s #14 Caleb Fish, a Michigan State transfer. Virginia Tech’s #21 Mac Church gets OSU’s #6-ranked Michigan transfer Cam Amine at 165, and another headliner comes at 174 between Virginia Tech’s #4 Lennox Wolak, a Columbia transfer, and the Cowboys’ #3 Dean Hamiti, a Wisconsin transfer.

The Cowboys have the rankings edge at 184 with #3 Dustin Plott against Virginia Tech’s #20 TJ Stewart, but another toss-up follows at 197 between Virginia Tech’s #10 Andy Smith and OSU’s #12 Luke Surber. OSU closes out its lineup with Air Force transfer, #3 Wyatt Henderson, against Tech’s #15 Jimmy Mullen.

Robie is taking upperweights Sonny Sasso (184), Sam Fisher (197) and Hunter Catka (285) with him as well. “So there’s always a chance that there could be some shifts in the lineup,” he said.

Hokies Set To Scuffle

The Hokies will send 10 to 12 wrestlers to the Southern Scuffle Jan. 4-5 at Chattanooga, Tennessee. 

“A lot of those guys will be young guys or guys that need to get matches, like Lennox Wollak, TJ Stewart, Connor McGonagle, to name a few that are in our starting lineup,” Robie said. 

“Hunter Catka will go as well; Sonny Sasso will go, so we're going to send a strong contingent there, and then some young guys will use one of their five dates of competition and will wrestle in that as well. So it won't be our full lineup, we won't be full strength, but I think we're going to send a number of guys that can have some success there.”

Home For The Holidays

Some of VT’s crew will have longer Christmas breaks than others.

“Our guys who are not traveling will be released today (Tuesday) after practice. The guys that are traveling will be released when they get home (from Oklahoma State),” Robie said. 

“And we kind of bring them back in phases, depending on whether they're competing at the Scuffle or whether they're in the starting lineup, and then guys that maybe don't fall in either one of those categories. So we give our guys about seven days off at home.”