To be fair, DTs youngsters at his training facility have proven to be quite competitive wrestlers.
David Taylor to Oklahoma State & related news
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Cael has 3 years at Iowa State and 13 years at Penn State. Tom Brands was an assistant at Iowa for 12 years, head coach at Virginia Tech for 2 years and has been head coach at Iowa for 18 years. That's 32 years of coaching experience including 20 as head coach. Cael has 11 national championships in 16 years as a head coach. That's a 69% top win percentage. Brands has 4 national championships in 20 years as a head coach. That's a 20% top win percentage.
Brands has twice as much total coaching experience as Sanderson and 25% more time as a head coach. On top of that, he inherited a reasonably strong program when he took the head job at Iowa. Yes, they had been slipping for a few years, but they were still considered a top tier program. But look at the huge difference between Brands and Sanderson in overall results. Brands isn't even close by comparison.
My point here is that obviously the time spent as head coach does not predict success at winning national titles. This point is further underscored by the fact that Gable won his first national championship in his first year as head coach at Iowa and only 3rd year on the program, and he continued to build on it from there. Gable and Sanderson both understand what is required to build a championship program. Brands does not.
So the question is, where is DT at in this equation? At this point, he has approximately 90 total days of head coaching experience. Not much of a resume if you only look at his D1 coaching record. But way back in their early careers, the same could be said about both Gable and Sanderson and we know now how they turned out. It seems pretty clear that there is something else required to know how to produce a national championship program. Does DT have that "something else?" Stay tuned.
Just my observation, I don't think it's taking DT any time at all to adjust to being a HC. In a sport like wrestling, it's not that complicated for someone like him.
1. He set culture changing rules and minus 2 kids (Carroll and Heeg), the kids agreed to his terms despite none of them signing up to wrestle for him. Only one has not been able to follow through so far (Williams) This is a very good sign because he inherited a pretty volatile situation with most of those kids probably expecting to wrestle for Coleman Scott with much more relaxed rules than DT is implementing.
2. He is building his RTC up fast and unfortunately his first signing was at our expense ... everyone knows he wants another from NLWC (Dake)
3. He has the attention of top high schoolers (Bo and Jax and apparently Blaze, though the kid doesn't post on social media) and got two kids to flip to him (Routledge, Robideau) and landed another good recruit (Ramirez) in 2025 (when kids are due to sign in months)
How is his coaching going to translate on the mat? Well we can't determine that until we see the season but I suspect very well as it seems kids are not burning themselves out with hard practices and also living more disciplined lives off the mat. Similarly, I suspect the style DT teaches (chain wrestling and scrambling, diversified attacks) will obviously pay dividends.
1. He set culture changing rules and minus 2 kids (Carroll and Heeg), the kids agreed to his terms despite none of them signing up to wrestle for him. Only one has not been able to follow through so far (Williams) This is a very good sign because he inherited a pretty volatile situation with most of those kids probably expecting to wrestle for Coleman Scott with much more relaxed rules than DT is implementing.
2. He is building his RTC up fast and unfortunately his first signing was at our expense ... everyone knows he wants another from NLWC (Dake)
3. He has the attention of top high schoolers (Bo and Jax and apparently Blaze, though the kid doesn't post on social media) and got two kids to flip to him (Routledge, Robideau) and landed another good recruit (Ramirez) in 2025 (when kids are due to sign in months)
How is his coaching going to translate on the mat? Well we can't determine that until we see the season but I suspect very well as it seems kids are not burning themselves out with hard practices and also living more disciplined lives off the mat. Similarly, I suspect the style DT teaches (chain wrestling and scrambling, diversified attacks) will obviously pay dividends.
I have to disagree with this, "Cael has demonstrated he's as good a college head coach as he was a college wrestler". Cael has lost more than one match as a coach. 😉
Reports from the room are that kids are able to confidently hit moves that they weren’t able to hit before. That goes a long way to build trust between coach and wrestler.
I keep asking her if she is tired of winning yet, she replies that I am a “Real Winner”! Somehow she makes it seem sarcastic though. Lol.
Just kidding, a good wife is a treasure. And sorry for your loss 85. We might have been on campus the same time.
two years short of 6 decades here. works because we both love sports. so far, no flags have been thrown. that's because she's a saint. though, she has been tested a few times😁.
I'm not going to go as far as to say that being a coach of a high-profile wrestling club like DT was means he will be successful as a college coach but it's not like DT doesn't have some significant coaching experience with high-level athletes. He has also been a mentor and high level athlete himself who seems to have an introspective personality as well as one that listens to coaches and works to improve. Many early PSU recruits cited DT and their time spent with him to be part of the reason they came to PSU which makes him likely to be a very effective recruiter. I believe all of these traits and experiences set him up to be one heck of a college coach.
Good luck to David and the pokes, in his role, he has to wear many hats and deal with a myriad of issues, here’s hoping he has much success! PSU fans, please remember Carl has a plan, WE ARE!
“Reports from the room.” Oh oh, we know where this is going. Are you really Spyker? And who is already beating Fix in the room? 😁
lol I’m sure this is another inside joke but just to be clear he’s 100% right. McComas spoke about it in an interview with OWrestle the other day.
Yeah, it's another inside joke.
Spyker was a long-time poster who when well-behaved posted a lot of nonsense he made up out of thin air. It was mostly harmless stupidity, with the emphasis on stupid. (When less well behaved, Spyker said stuff like Quentin Wright needed to dump his girlfriend who he eventually married. Also pledged money to charities and then weaseled out of it.)
(Spyker appears to have found a new home on the other PSU board, with a, cough cough, spicy new handle.)
"Beating him in the room" was Spyker claiming that in the fall, before official practices started, true freshman Nick Suriano was beating graduated national champ Nico Megaludis in the room.
Now wait a second, it was Spyker who predicted that PSU would need EIGHT SCORING WRESTLERS TO WIN!!! Well last year, we had 8 wrestlers placing and we did win. OK, so the margin was somewhat lopsided, but that's splitting hairs a bit if you ask me. Spyker was still correct about the number of wrestlers.
How's that calf muscle healing up? Sorry you won't be golfing in the NLWC Classic this year!
That was gunsie, not spyker
It's on Rokfin - and that's as specific as he got. Probably doesn't want to let any "secrets" out.
I’m from Missouri when it comes to any room reports - show me
I could have sworn that came from Spyker and not 21 Guns, but it's hard to keep track of who posted what over the years. Are you sure 21 Guns isn't just Spyker posting under another name? They sure had some commonality in their posts.
HS Recruiting News
Great post. I agree completely. DT is nailing it so far IMO. If I had a gun to my head, he is a more important phone call to take as a recruit than anyone not named Cael. Better than Ryan or Brands, or God love him Telford. If he gets Dake into the RTC, OSU will be a force. Another thing...
oklahomastate.forums.rivals.com
Post 3011. From our own McScorely no less giving his account of what McComas said in the Rokfin interview.
"Summer Recap: He went to US Open at 61, lost in BR. Missed weight at Trials, just stated "mistakes happen" and went 0-2 since he was trying to make 61 and had to wrestle 65. He was Daton's partner at trials and was rolling around with Spratley and Hughes also. He added him and Daton have been close forever and he's a mentor to him so he's really happy he is staying. He mentioned he is really close with Lockett as well
Right now: He is enrolled in classes, having fun. He misses the old coaches but bought into new coaching staff, he said he's breaking through in positions he hasn't been able to before (another side of wrestling, calls it controlling and dominating) Asked about differences, he reiterated both coaching staffs were great. But said it's just a different way of practicing now (one song on repeat at practice, he calls chatter bait, get ready for hearing jeers from crowd)
Next year: He doesn't know if he'll redshirt, he would prefer to (and grow) I imagine he will. He's getting bigger though, he said he can get down to 125 (bro ...) but he is about 148 walk around and wants to be a 133. My guess is he's a 141 ultimately."
Yes, gunsie was the "8 scoring wrestlers" guy.
No, gunsie and spyker are not the same person.
Heard DT said Love’s sucks compared to Sheetz and Wawa.
Spyker was good natured; Gunsie is a lunatic
Spyker is like Wavy Gravy; Gunsie a doomsday prepper
Love’s does suck. It’s way down the list. Oncue and QT are way better… that and Buc-ee’s is coming
Guns is like a doomsday prepper who took bath salts instead of ritalin, and washed it down with black coffee concentrate.
This was well written. I agree,,, it’s going to be a race for second for a long time behind PSU. But just with the quick additions and changes DT has already made, I see it being a race for third. PSU, next tier Oklahoma State and then everyone else battling for third
DT has been with Cael since day one. He knows the system, the importance of certain things (RTC, Partners, Recruting & keeping around good character kids, etc)
If DT can make the switch from all in competing & personally chasing his goals to all in coaching, look out. Only issue I see is, Cael & company are selfless coaches. They run from the spotlight. Can DT do this? It’s honestly one of the things that makes the psu staff even more special imo
I love PSU, but will cheer for the PSU-west campus unless we battle head to head.
No need to "run from the spotlight" - as that doesn't make you a good/bad coach.
Is he selfless? Yes. He's doing everything he can to make these kids good as persons and wrestlers. Investing a crazy amount of time with all of them. Wrestling with them everyday, doing fun things together as a team.
Then I think finally we might have some competition. I agree, see & hear, he is doing great things already. Heck with the guys he took and keep getting make OK State somewhat of a threat but an almost lock for second.
Maybe he can take the “Best Second Place Team Ever” title from Ryan
Exactly. I will do the same for all future head coaches from Cael's tree.
Eh - way easier to drastically improve if you’re ready to splash cash for RTC, NIL and portal guys than it was pre Wild West. DT will have a very salty team this year. Even though he will lose the 4 older transfers after this year, it’s so easy now to plug and play. I’m thinking any even semi “hole” and Cael will not hesitate to try and fix it rather than rolling with an 8/9 man strong team because of the heightened competition.
We know pretty much what DT will get from
165-HW aside from Hamiti who is a wild card and it won’t touch what we have for this year at those weights, but I will be very interested how their 125-57 go because those weights are where they are young. If they make jumps and don’t fizzle like Carter Young, those will be great building blocks. Yes, we are loaded on paper going forward, but we’ve been lucky how many of our stud recruits have not just panned out, but have been incredible. That needs to continue.
It is clear with the hire of Clay and the very active work of HVU that Cael is properly paranoid - there was clearly a concerted effort to poach our guys. If we keep our 5stars - and why would you leave if you’re having success, NIL is competitive, and, for most of our guys, you’re closer to home - and recruit on par with everyone else, we’ll be fine. There will likely still be some news to drop from the seismic change at Ok State - maybe some more RTC names, for example; a few recruits. Some will panic if a Dake or someone leaves, but I’d much rather keep our huge, young core than worry about getting a DT crony poached. Dake is 33, Snyder is almost 30 with a lot of tread on the tires. Do I want us to keep them - hell yeah!!!! They are legends and huge recruiting draws and still have the talent to rack up accolades. But if they bounce, that gives us more resources to get and keep the next generation of Team USA.
Getting Blaze would be an amazing response to this summer of momentous news outside HV.
A lot of good stuff in here. I have tried to tell the OSU crowd that if DT sends out his transfers this year, then 2026 is a down year. He will go from 2nd/3rd in 2025 to 5th or worse in 2026. I understand why he is doing it (recruiting), but IMO it'll take longer to be a threat this way. I thought he would have been better off going all-in year two and showing momentum. Having a down year in 2026 has the opposite effect.
Interesting. One thing to note is that I think we’re at the end of the huge graduate transfer glut. Way easier to poach those guys than underclassmen subject to shorter portal windows and less reason to be ready for a new environment than someone who’s been in the same college town for 5 years.
Only matter to an alcoholic if they are the one that admits it
Yes, getting Blaze would be the perfect response to what OSU has done lately. It would remind everyone that PSU is still the top dog and everyone else Is competing for second. OSU got a few nice commitments since DT came but nothing earth shattering. I’m sure he will get kids on a similar level as Blaze (Bo or Jax?) but Cael will likely continue to get the best of the best that fit his program and Blaze is definitely that
I received preliminary copy of the next OSU Trustees meeting. Some egomaniacal stuff!
8.3 New Business
A request from “anonymous” for a minor update to all existing signs, buildings, placards, etc. on campus (updates in red), to be completed prior to the start of the fall semester:
DT-Boone Ankle Pickens
8.3 New Business
A request from “anonymous” for a minor update to all existing signs, buildings, placards, etc. on campus (updates in red), to be completed prior to the start of the fall semester:
DT-Boone Ankle Pickens
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