Loss takes enormous amount of pressure off Taylor

It's cliche to say that losses can be a good thing, but in the case of Penn State's David Taylor, I believe that to be true.

David Taylor was named Big Ten Wrestler of the Year and Big Ten Freshman of the Year at the 2011 Big Ten Championships (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)

Taylor was the most dominant freshman college wrestling has seen in a long time ... perhaps ever. He went 38-1 and earned bonus points in 34 matches. He was Big Ten Wrestler of the Year and Big Ten Freshman of the Year. Taylor had a dream freshman season, with the exception of one match. Unfortunately for Taylor, that one match against Arizona State's Bubba Jenkins -- the 157-pound finals at the 2011 NCAA championships -- when he was pinned in a cradle, came on the biggest stage when the stakes were the highest and the whole (wrestling) world was watching.

The expectations have been sky-high for Taylor all season long. Some were already hailing him as the next undefeated four-time NCAA champion before he even wrestled in his first postseason. But these expectations were brought on by Taylor -- not because of anything he stated publically -- but because of his domination on the mat. The David Taylor-Cael Sanderson comparison was inevitable, fair or unfair. Taylor, who grew up admiring Cael, made it look easy all season long, racking up points and seemingly having fun in the process, much like Cael did when he was an athlete. Taylor wrestles like Cael and dominates like Cael.

When Taylor has talked about his wrestling goals in college, the goals have always centered around winning NCAA titles (individual and team), not going undefeated. Cael has stated numerous times that his goal when he began his college wrestling career at Iowa State was never to go undefeated. Being undefeated is something other people put on Cael, just like people were putting that on Taylor.

The pressure to remain undefeated in his college career was already starting to mount before Taylor even stepped on the mat at his first Big Ten Championships. Now that Taylor has a blemish on his record, it takes an enormous amount of pressure off him. There have been numerous three-time NCAA champions, including six in the last 15 years. When Iowa's Lincoln McIlravy capped off his college wrestling career in 1997 by winning his third NCAA title, he used the term "also-ran" to describe what it felt like to be a three-time NCAA champion despite losing only three matches in college.

David Taylor picked up bonus points in 34 of his 38 wins (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)

If Taylor wins three NCAA titles, he may also feel like an "also-ran," but his legacy in the sport is ultimately going to be measured by how high he goes in the sport. John Smith was "only" a two-time NCAA champion, but he's widely considered the greatest American wrestler ever because he dominated the world for six years and reached a level that few, if any, American wrestlers ever reached.

Now that Taylor has lost a match, he no longer has to carry around the burden of being the second coming of Cael. A weight has been lifted off his shoulders. Taylor has a chance to become a three-time NCAA champion and still go down as one of the all-time greats without having the distraction of having to answer question after question about being undefeated for the next three seasons. Taylor's coach, the only wrestler to accomplish the feat, also won't have to answer the same questions over and over again.

If Taylor would have gone undefeated this season and won an NCAA title as a freshman, there would have been those who would have said it's a foregone conclusion that he's going to become a four-time NCAA champion and never lose a college wrestling match, stating it almost as fact, not opinion. It's fun to speculate and make predictions, but if there is one thing we have learned over the years from watching freshmen do extraordinary things on a wrestling mat, it's that nothing is ever guaranteed.

Dustin Schlatter won an NCAA title as a true freshman (Photo/Jeff Beshey, The Guillotine)

Dustin Schlatter, like Taylor, was a four-time Ohio state champion who began his college wrestling career with great expectations. As a true freshman at Minnesota, Schlatter dropped an early-season match to Central Michigan's Mark DiSalvo, a returning All-American, 1-0. That loss immediately took pressure off Schlatter. He then went on an incredible run and put together one of the greatest true freshman seasons in NCAA wrestling history. Schlatter beat defending NCAA champion Zack Esposito of Oklahoma State twice that season, including once by a lopsided score of 11-2 in front of a national television audience on ESPNU. At the NCAA tournament, Schlatter outscored his opponents 39-2. It was hard to envision Schlatter not winning three more NCAA titles after making such a grand entrance.

But Schlatter never again reached the top of the podium in college. He was never the same wrestler in college. Injuries took a toll on Schlatter, as did the pressure to live up to the expectations.

"I think I could have handled (pressure) a lot better my sophomore year," Schlatter once said. "I worried about that type of thing too much, whereas my freshman year it didn't bother me at all."

There were two freshman NCAA champions in 2010 -- Iowa's Matt McDonough, and Cornell's Kyle Dake -- and neither entered the NCAA tournament this season as the No. 1 seed. The two wrestlers combined to lose four matches this season and only one of the two wrestlers (Dake) repeated as NCAA champion. Repeating as NCAA champion is very difficult, becoming a four-time NCAA champion is virtually impossible, and going undefeated throughout a college wrestling career is virtually unthinkable.

David Taylor with Penn State coach Cael Sanderson (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)

David Taylor was a long way from doing what Cael Sanderson did as a college competitor, but many believed he was on track to do the same. Seeing Taylor lose after such a dominant freshman season only reinforced how truly special Cael's achievement was. All it takes is a single mistake or another wrestler rising to the occasion, just as Jenkins did, to put a blemish on a wrestler's record.

I was at Iowa State during the Cael Sanderson era and I remember being asked if I thought Cael might lose at some point in college. I remember laughing at the absurdity of the question and thinking, 'This person has obviously never seen Cael Sanderson wrestle.' Cael never left any doubt or made you believe there was even a remote chance he might lose a match.

There will never be another Cael Sanderson in college wrestling, just like there will never be another Michael Jordan in the NBA.

Still, I believe David Taylor is a legend in the making. And I'm not alone in that thinking.

Cael Sanderson tweets about David Taylor the day after the 2011 NCAA Championships

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Loss takes enormous amount of pressure off Taylor

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