Oklahoma coach Jack Spates preaches toughness to his wrestlers.

“Coming to wrestle” and “coming to battle” are two of Spates’ favorites catchphrases.

Friday at Howard McCasland, the Sooners’ first three wrestlers didn’t necessarily come to battle No. 9 Iowa State. After that, the Sooners sent wrestler after wrestler out to the mat, only to see each one come back defeated.

It wasn’t until the ninth match the Sooners experienced a victory, yet by then the dual had long been decided. The Cyclones routed the 18th-ranked Sooners 31-3.

It was OU’s worst loss since a 38-3 pasting at the hands of Oklahoma State in 2003. The Sooners hadn’t given up 30 points since losing to Iowa State 30-6 in 2005.

“We knew that this was going to be a very, very tough dual,” Spates said. “Did I think we were going to lose all those matches? Absolutely not. It was very frustrating.”

OU fell to 11-3 overall and 0-2 in the Big 12. Iowa State improved to 12-3 and 1-0. The Sooners have lost eight straight duals to conference opponents going back to the 2005-’06 season.

OU lost the first eight weights, but it was the way it lost the first three that irked Spates. Joey Fio fell to No. 17 Tyler Clark 9-0 at 125, Johnny Starzyk was pinned by No. 7 Nick Fanthorpe at 133 and No. 14 Zack Bailey lost to No. 20 Nick Gallick 10-3 at 141.

The Cyclones were the aggressors in each bout.

“You have guys on the mat looking over and shaking their heads,” Spates said. “Hey, I don’t care if you don’t know what to do. Fight. Battle. We just didn’t do that early on. But after that, we turned it around. There were a lot of great matches.”

The Sooners kept losing, but wrestled well enough to be competitive.

No. 5 Joel Flaggert kept it from being a shutout by beating David Bertolino 3-2 at 197.

“I was hard on our first three guys tonight. Real hard,” Spates said. “I wasn’t hard on anybody after that because they came to wrestle. They battled. We didn’t seal the deal in any of those matches, so give (Iowa State) credit for getting it done.”

Two of the better performances were Chad Terry at 157 and Nathan Fernandez at heavyweight. Terry, ranked 20th, went up against No. 6 Cyler Sanderson and lost 8-3. Terry got the crowd on its feet by being the aggressor in the first period.

At heavyweight, OU’s unranked Fernandez lost to No. 5 David Zabriskie 6-5.