Ask Pitt wrestling coach Rande Stottlemyer who the best wrestler he’s ever coached is, and… Ask Pitt wrestling coach Rande Stottlemyer who the best wrestler he’s ever coached is, and he can’t pick one. John Withrow, Mark Bodo, Jeff Jelic and Scott Hovan all come to mind.

“We’ve had some pretty good horses,” he says.

But Stottlemyer does mention one wrestler twice.

“Pat won that thing a couple times. He was an alternate of the Olympic team, too.”

Pat is Pat Santoro – a two-time NCAA champion and a four-time All-American. Stottlemyer was the Eastern Wrestling League’s Coach of the Year during Santoro’s junior and senior years – the only times he’s earned the distinction.

“Santoro was as four-timer,” Stottlemyer said. “But what Keith has done is pretty incredible.”

Not what Keith did, but what he has done – as in so far. As Santoro’s shaggy-haired photo grins over one half of the Pitt wrestling room in the Fitzgerald Field House as part of a memorial to 10 Pitt national champions, fifth-year senior Keith Gavin wrestles on the other as skin slaps and feet shuffle when a late November practice starts. He moves fluently, reaching and ducking, smoothly and swiftly, every move precise. He’s hand fighting with freshman Ethan Headlee, then the team leader in pins.

“I wish I had an older guy like that to look up to when I was a freshman,” assistant coach Ron Tarquinio said, one of Pitt’s best wrestlers two years ago.

The rest of the team surrounds them, each pair practicing similar techniques in gold ring outlines on the blue mat covering the floor. Gavin wrestles in the ring closest to assistant coach Jason Peters and the epicenter of practice. Peters barks orders, and Gavin executes under his nose.

The wrestlers change partners every few minutes, shuffling from ring to ring. When the hand fighting is done and it’s time to swap, Headlee looks elsewhere. Gavin stays put. He is the rock in this room.

He’s come a long way to be so stable. The skinny kid from Factoryville, Pa., a town with a population of fewer than 2,000 in the northeast corner of Pennsylvania, hacked through the trials in his early career to emerge seemingly carved from wood.

“I’m always evolving, I guess,” Gavin said. “When you stop evolving, that’s when you peak.”

One could say he’s as close to a peak as it comes. Gavin’s the No. 1-ranked wrestler in the country in the 174-pound weight class and handled the No. 2 guy from Navy, Matt Stolpinski, in November at the NWCA Classic in Oregon. He’s been to the NCAA championships twice and was the national runner-up in the same weight class last year. He’s as close to a national champion as Pitt’s had since Santoro in ’88.

Four years ago, though, the No. 1 ranking, the national championship hopes and a plaque of his own on the wall next to Santoro’s were as far away from Gavin as Oregon is from Pittsburgh. The 21-17 record he posted freshman year started with five consecutive losses.

“I’m sure nobody would have [then] said he’s going to be a national finalist junior year,” Stottlemyer said. “But if you get guys and you create the right environment, and they have a passion for it, those guys become the core of our team.”

Granted, Gavin’s first collegiate dual match, which pits top wrestlers against one another, was against Troy Letters – an NCAA champion at Lehigh.

“So it wasn’t like I was wrestling scrubs,” Gavin said. “Regardless of who it was, I was still disappointed with my start. I think there came a point where I could have gave up on it because things weren’t going well, or I could have went back to the drawing board and figured out what I was doing wrong and how I could better myself.”

Gavin chose the eraser and chalk, and he conjured the passion his coach adores. He studied film, he faced his own weaknesses and realized his strengths as he redshirted his true sophomore year, not competing in team matches.

And what Gavin eventually drew up were the blueprints for an NCAA championship berth the next year.

“The way I looked at wrestling kind of changed because I had time to sit back and kind of be a student of the sport,” he said. “I watched a lot of film from the great wrestlers of the past, and then watched my own film to try to find out what I was doing wrong.

“Physically I’ve gotten a lot stronger. I’m really flexible, so I’ve really tried to use that to my advantage. I try to beat my guys by being in better position. I try to do my own thing.”

It works. Gavin followed those plans, training and studying through the spring and summer and into the fall. Though he was bounced from the double-elimination NCAAs his redshirt sophomore year after two straight losses, he finished the runner up in last year’s tournament – good enough for All-American status.

Still not good enough, though.

“We’ve had a mess of All-Americans,” Stottlemyer said. “But we want guys on this wall over here.”

He points to the national champions.

“And we might get a few here shortly.”