Oklahoma State has a really interesting Saturday ahead of them. The Cowboys wrestle Air Force at noon ET and then travel onto Laramie for a second dual of the day with Wyoming at 7 PM.

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Feb. 8 at 9 PM ET

One of the biggest storylines of that road trip has become if and when we’ll see converted football star Brock Martin in OSU singlet? He weighed in on Sunday vs Missouri but did not compete. Here were John Smith’s comments on Martin after the Missouri dual:

“Well, I’m going to keep my options open. He’s pretty good, but . . . he’s not ready. Physically he’s not ready and you want to protect him a little bit. This time in the season when you get tired in a match, 90 percent of the time that’s when you get injured. I’m not ready to use him. If he keeps clawing along that is an option towards the end. As we go into the Big 12 more than likely we have no shot at getting a heavyweight to nationals other than somebody takes a spot. If we have three to four Big 12 guys that have automatic spots for the conference I want to put the best guy we can put in to maybe take a spot and make a trip to nationals. I’ll continue to look at that, but that’s still six weeks away, so we’ll try to build his conditioning a little more and see where he’s at.

“He’s won a lot of matches in his career. He’s a wrestler. I would’ve loved to have him when he came out of high school, but that wasn’t the direction he was going . . . but you also understand you need to get people in conditioning. It’s a dangerous sport when you’re not in shape.” 

Objectively looking at what seems to be coach Smith’s point of view here, it sounds like he does not plan to wrestle Martin this weekend. 

Subjectively, though, the Cowboys have two Big 12 duals on tap this weekend, and Martin’s best path to steal one of those NCAA tournament bids Smith is referring to would be for him to not show up in Tulsa as the worst seed in the conference tournament. How could he do that? By knocking off a few guys this weekend that he could see in that tournament. Even not fully up to speed, it’s conceivable for Martin to take out the Big 12’s ninth-ranked wrestler in Kane Hutchison of Air Force. The big weekend test for him would be Wyoming’s Brian Andrews, who is currently ranked #5 in the Big 12 at 285 and was an NCAA qualifier last season.

One note regarding Brock Martin would be the general timeline from the first practice of the season to the first tournament. The first official practice of this season took place on October 11 with the OCU open on November 9, or a period of 29 days, which is roughly what the timeline would be from when Martin started practicing wrestling to Saturday and what could potentially be his debut.

Regardless of the indication by Smith that we will probably not see Martin here, fans will likely be glued to the screen this weekend to see if he does step out on the mat on Saturday at 285.

Seth Duckworth is a Stillwater-based writer who covers Oklahoma State University wrestling for Pistols Firing Blog, the best OSU news and community site on the internet. Follow Seth on Twitter.