Keegan O'Toole means business.
No, seriously. Business.
In Missouri wrestling history, only one athlete has ever won three national championships in their time as a Tiger: Hickman High product and two-time World Championships gold medalist J'den Cox.
This year, Missouri will send a wrestler in all 10 weight categories to the NCAA Wrestling Championships between Thursday and Saturday to T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. The Tigers have nine automatic bids, and one at-large qualifier.
O'Toole is the lone top seed of the bunch, ranking No. 1 in the 165-pound weight class with a 19-0 record this season.
On the brink of history, has the pressure ramped up?
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Missouri coach Brian Smith said that if O'Toole does "what he does," there's a good chance he'll leave KC with national title No. 3. In the same press conference, he praised O'Toole's mentality, and said he'll "go far as a businessman."
Fitting, as O'Toole struck an equally balanced approach ahead of the tournament.
"I think it's just striving for — not perfection, but striving to make improvement," O'Toole said. "Like if (you're focused) on, 'I gotta win this, and then I'm good; I'm gonna get this, and I'm good.' I don't think that's a very good indicator of how you can develop as a person both in and out of the sport. Same thing with business. Like, alright, 'I hit a million dollars, and then I'll be happy; I hit two million, and then I'll be set,' You should be like, 'how can I make my business better, or how can I be more efficient?'
"And I think that's kind of where I'm at right now, because I don't care if I win another wrestling match my entire life — I just want to enjoy it and I want to improve every day."
Before winning the Big 12 title on March 9 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, O'Toole said he was playing the computer game Minecraft and watching "investing videos" to take his mind away from the event. He'll do the same during his off hours ahead of his matches in Kansas City.
Don't mistake it for lackadaisicalness or complacency after reaching the peak of college wrestling.
This is a learned skill.
Back in high school, O'Toole said there was a strong correlation between how he viewed his self-worth and how he was faring in wrestling.
That's taken time and effort to shake, but he's learned it somewhere in the midst of a pair of national titles.
"The only thing that really changed was just digging into my faith more, like knowing that everything I'm already going to do my entire life is already written and really believing that and trusting in that process," O'Toole said. … "The only thing I can do is work, do my work as good as I can, and just serve and love the people around me. And that's really given me a lot of peace, especially wrestling at the highest level of competition, because it can bring out a lot of stress, anxiety and overthinking and self-doubt."
Again, don't let that fool you into believing winning doesn't matter.
Missouri coach Brian Smith has seen some tremendous wrestlers in his 26 years of coaching the Tigers. O'Toole is among the best.
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It's his work ethic that's got him there, the head coach said. That, and what Smith calls O'Toole's "beginner's mindset."
"They always say young kids can learn better than us, because they don't know anything yet. So they just want to learn," Smith said. … "(O'Toole) feels like there's days he doesn't know how to wrestle. I've heard him say that. I'm like, 'don't say that, you know how to wrestle, but you just made mistakes today, and we got to correct them.' And then he gets his mind right, and he's working on it, and he just wants to constantly learn."
Most of that, now, is small technical fixes. Smith sees it behind the scenes, and he watches him implement it in the matches that O'Toole has learned not to fixate on.
And more often than not, that process has worked.
"It's a joy to coach that, because you see the little details that he was working on in the practice room," Smith said, "and then how it comes about in a match and you're like, 'wow.' So, it's fun to watch that, but it's what makes him so great."
Title No. 3 won't be easy. Smith called the 165 weight class probably the deepest in the competition.
If the seedings work out in order, O'Toole will face Iowa State's David Carr (22-2) in the semifinals. O'Toole beat Carr in last year's title bout and in the Big 12 title match this year. Their head-to-head record is now 2-2.
If there's a No. 1 vs. 2 final, O'Toole will face Penn State's Mitchell Mesenbrink (21-0). Those two were high school teammates at Arrowhead High in Hartland, Wisconsin.
O'Toole begins his title defense against either No. 32 Jake Logan (Lehigh) or No. 33 Jack Thomsen (Northern Iowa) on Thursday morning.
The Missouri star maintains that, sometimes, "wrestling is just a fraction" of what he thinks about. He's got two national titles already, after all.
But that doesn't mean a third wouldn't be welcome.
"I think it would mean that a lot of my work has paid off," O'Toole said. "I think it would be cool. But then again, I'm trying to chase things a lot higher than just a national title. It's just where we're going, it's a tournament. I have a lot to improve on from my Big 12 performance. I didn't necessarily think I wrestled the greatest. So, it's another opportunity to make adjustments and get better."
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Keegan O'Toole enters nationals with chance to tie Missouri wrestling history
