What Makes GIA Special - Nick Piccininni Pins Spencer Lee

This feature story is part of the "What Makes GIA Special" series about some of the best moments in Gallagher-Iba Arena history. In this story, former Cowboy wrestler Nick Piccininni, associate head coach Zack Esposito and wrestling radio broadcaster Rex Holt relive Piccininni's fall over Iowa's defending national champion Spencer Lee in 2019.

Nick Piccininni: "Whenever Iowa comes to town, it's Iowa week so everyone is extra focused on the match. You know it's going to be a barnburner which is how we prepare. We prepare for tough matches and for things to get hectic, crazy and intense. Practice all week is very directed toward them and how they wrestle. Then if you have a guy like Spencer who is very good at a lot of things, you're going over how to stop everything he is really good at. That's what I did. I went over how to stop him on top, how to get out from underneath him and how to capitalize on my feet."

Zack Esposito: "That whole week I remember him being pretty focused and covering some things from the bottom position. With Spencer, you knew how much he relied on that top position to separate the scores from his opponents. We knew going into it if we could neutralize his top, then we could fare well on our feet with him."

"Knowing that he was going to start the dual at 125, those first two matches, and his match, was going to be especially important. A guy like Spencer can come out and tech fall you if you're not ready on top.

NP: "That night (before the dual) I went up to Gallagher-Iba with Boo Lewallen and the stage was already set… I literally said it out loud from right where I would be standing looking right across the mat to where he would be standing and put my hands up like I had already won the match. I spoke it into existence. I said it and I saw myself doing it before I did it."

"I told (Boo) I was going to stick him. I actually trained all week to do it. I trained cradles all week, while watching film and studying what he does. I saw his tendencies and knew when you go to single leg he goes to twist spilt and he did exactly that."

"In my previous matches, it was always the first period when he took advantage of my mistakes. Later in the matches, in every single match I had with him, I always would start to come back. I would snag a takedown here, get his wrist and almost turn him here, cut him, take him down there, so toward the end of my matches in previous battles with him I was always coming back. I knew if I make this first period tough, then it could lead to me breaking him and beating him how I thought I could."

ZE: "It was a great time because it was No. 2 and No. 3 in the country wrestling each other. We had a sellout with Penn State one year and we lost so we were coming back with another stage and a packed arena and we knew we were capable of winning."

"That whole atmosphere was just loud. Things were happening so fast that you weren't too focused on a lot of things."

Rex Holt: "It was standing-room only with a raised stage and national attention. It was OSU and Iowa. Iowa was probably a slight favorite in that one and favored in the first weight class."

NP: "When you have a giant crowd like that you're just in the zone. You're not real worried about what other people are doing. To be honest it was just another day, but another day with something bigger in front of you."

"The energy was high and you could feel it. You're a little bit more antsy than usual, but I treated the day like normal."

ZE: "Coming down the stairs, you kind of know there are people in there but you don't really know how many until you're in the arena. We were huddled up in the wrestling room where we're focused on a lot of things and then you go down the stairs, start hearing the crowd, then you go out there for the runout and all of a sudden you're looking around and there's not an empty seat in the house. It's real."

NP: "Up to that point I was 22-0, maybe 23-0 at that point, so I was rolling. I was undefeated and this was late in the season before we hit Big 12s. I was in full stride at this point. I felt good and everything went perfectly for me. Going into the match the day of, I felt confident. I felt like my work had been put in and it was just time to execute at that point."

"I knew if I make it tough on him in the first period and I go 0-0, then I have a chance to break him and open it up. He took two shot attempts on me. He got to my leg the first time and I was up in a single and I made it really tough on him, made him work and we ended up going out of bounds. I broke his lock going out of bounds and I was like, 'Yep. This is it. This is the point.' I could feeling breaking a little bit when he didn't get success on his first shot."

"It was an intense first period. When you're wrestling Spencer the first period is the most important, if you want to beat him. It's always period number one. He has a crazy three minutes in him. But if you can get him out of those three minutes, that's when things can open up."

ZE: "When Piccininni got out there, he wrestled a solid first period. He was good and focused. He was in on a couple of opportunities to score but going into the second at 0-0, now the opportunity was there to go down and we knew that this was the moment we were going to separate ourselves from him and could win the match or not."

NP: "In the second period, I escaped and got to my feet to go up 1-0."

ZE: "He fought and they came off the mat a couple times. He finally got out and when he did you could kind of see the wear on Spencer at that time."

NP: "We're battling on our feet and get into another scramble. He shoots a shot on me, but I don't give it up. I hit kind of a split almost and ended up out of bounds. We came back to the center and I ended up taking a shot on the edge, a single leg. At this point, there was maybe 20 seconds left in the period and I was on the edge of the mat with the clock running down. I kind of went for a limp-arm and his hands came in front of him to try to defend the leg, but he goes into the splits and at that point I had his leg shelved on my knee. I just reached up, snagged his head, cradled him up and threw him to his back with maybe two to three seconds left when they called the fall."

RH: "Once he locked the hands there was no getting out. He had that cradle locked up tight and Spencer Lee was dead to rights as they slapped the mat."

NP: "Oh man, if you look up flat in the dictionary, it was that. There was no way he was getting out of that. There was no way anybody was getting out of that."

WHAT. YES @NickyPich96! pic.twitter.com/QEQt8aJ5Y9
— Taylor Miller-Gregorio (@taylorgregorio) February 24, 2019

RH: "The crowd, everybody was at fever pitch. It was the first match of the day and OSU was the underdog. There's no doubt that changed the momentum in OSU's favor."

ZE: "That was the loudest I've ever heard Gallagher-Iba Arena."

NP: "They say it was the loudest ever and I agree because I was in the center of the mat and it was nuts. I remember walking around the mat and I couldn't think it was so loud. Fourteen-thousand people screaming, it was nuts. I could feel the energy from the fans. I could feel the energy from my teammates and coaches."

"When I looked over at our coaches, that's when I was like 'Oh man, this place is going nuts.' When you get your coaches to show emotion like that, it's a different feeling. The fans are cool when they're screaming, but it's the people who put the time in with you and grind with you. So, when they have emotion like that, it's a different kind of reaction that sets you off inside."

Holy Cowboy.

Nick Piccininni decks Spencer Lee and you'll never hear GIA louder.
— FloWrestling (@FloWrestling) February 24, 2019

ZE: "When you start with a pin over a defending national champion and a guy who's supposed to be unbeatable, it was awesome. That kind of set the tone when you start the match against Iowa and you're up 6-0 when Iowa is relying on being up 6-0 with a guy like Spencer stepping out there. That gave us the headway and then it set Daton (Fix) up for a big match against (Austin) DeSanto, which also led on."

"We knew going into the match we were going to need some big points in big opportunities and that match for Piccininni set the tone for the whole dual and in a sense won it for us."

Oklahoma State University Athletics

What Makes GIA Special - Nick Piccininni Pins Spencer Lee

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