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Iowa Style?

AgaveMaria
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AgaveMaria NCAA Qualifier

AgaveMaria

Posted
Posted

Grinders - R - Us.

Made worse by the reality that they no longer "own the third period" on the mat.

” Never attribute to inspiration that which can be adequately explained by delusion”.

Interviewed_at_Weehawken Big Brain

Interviewed_at_Weehawken

Posted
Posted
8 minutes ago, AgaveMaria said:

Grinders - R - Us.

Made worse by the reality that they no longer "own the third period" on the mat.

Well, that may all change! Now they have associated themselves with "Coach Cal" and the "Treighning Lab" so they will have access to the same pseudoscience and modern chemistry as PSU and the NLWC!

steamboat_charlie State Champion

steamboat_charlie

Posted
Posted
49 minutes ago, Interviewed_at_Weehawken said:

Well, that may all change! Now they have associated themselves with "Coach Cal" and the "Treighning Lab" so they will have access to the same pseudoscience and modern chemistry as PSU and the NLWC!

IntEresting.  I hadn't heard that. It will Probably pay off fOr them.  

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jackwebster College Starter

jackwebster

Posted
Posted

Despite the evangelism, the PSU guys seem pleasant. They smile and even laugh when they win. Even Bo Nikal who makes his living hurting other people at least went through the motions. 

Is there no room for surly dudes anymore?

ionel Big Brain

ionel

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, jackwebster said:

Despite the evangelism, the PSU guys seem pleasant. They smile and even laugh when they win. Even Bo Nikal who makes his living hurting other people at least went through the motions. 

Is there no room for surly dudes anymore?

Sure:

SmartSelect_20240403-095515_Chrome.jpg.4bb7c3730482ad5495a0bf064f8ed5e9.jpg

2BPE 11/17/24 SMC

pokemonster NCAA All-American

pokemonster

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, lisa morales said:

The twins are 5'4".  Difficult to recruit being so tiny.

I've wondered if their embarrassingly small stature has lost them respect on the recruiting trail, especially with their inflated Napoleon complex. Aaron Brooks has lost some respect as well with his relatively small stature in comparison to past 197 lb champs. Embarrassing. 

Elevator College Starter

Elevator

Posted
Posted
15 minutes ago, lisa morales said:

The twins are 5'4".  Difficult to recruit being so tiny.

yup - the proper measure of men is height, weight, and water displacement.

jackwebster College Starter

jackwebster

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, lisa morales said:

Tom should stop wearing a T-Shirt underneath a golf shirt.  It makes him look unsophisticated.  

Really? I did not know this rule of bougie decorum.

jackwebster College Starter

jackwebster

Posted
Posted

Mark my words: the current crop of youngsters who grew up with an existential fear of climate disaster, plague, and economic collapse and/or with a thorough distrust of the political mechanisms that  spread this fear will not be motivated by fun, games, dodgeball, and play wrestling. The surly is coming. 

  • Bob 1
wrestle87 NCAA All-American

wrestle87

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, jackwebster said:

Mark my words: the current crop of youngsters who grew up with an existential fear of climate disaster, plague, and economic collapse and/or with a thorough distrust of the political mechanisms that  spread this fear will not be motivated by fun, games, dodgeball, and play wrestling. The surly is coming. 

"Once in a lifetime catastrophic events" seem to be adhering to the same schedule as the olympics...

Kids these days are getting pretty good at seeing overwrought stupidity and pointing it out as same, and they sure are a heck of a lot kinder to one another than we were growing up...

  • Bob 2
BAC College Starter

BAC

Posted
Posted (edited)

Personally I just don't think its about "Iowa Style" or non-Iowa Style, its that they just don't have the right coaching staff to elevate their guys to the highest level. 

Brands is an effective coach, no doubt, but he's just one guy, with a very specific stylistic approach and knowledge base.  The problem is that he hasn't surrounded himself with enough complementary ideas and perspectives to compete effectively against top programs with more dynamic and varied coaching staffs.  

I don't think having 2 Brands brothers is much better than just one.  They are pretty much clones of each other, and neither brings something to the table that the other doesn't already bring.  After that you have Morningstar and Telford, but they're both Brands wrestlers/disciples, and neither was known for their on-the-mat creativity or diversity in technique, so its hard to see how they broaden the coaching staff's knowledge base.  Same with Dennis, the HWC coach.

To be sure, one good thing the Hawks have done in the last couple years is revive the moribund HWC, which now has several former AAs.  But even there, its all just former Brands wrestlers. 

It is, in short, all Brands.  All Brands, all the time.  

The net result is that if you're a new Hawk recruit, the teaching and technique you get is going to be largely limited to what's in Brands' head.  The potential solutions to challenges you face will be largely limited to Brands' preferences.  If the Brands don't know something or aren't good at something or don't care for a solution or approach that others like very much, you probably won't learn it.

That's just extraordinarily limiting.  They've effectively walled themselves off from the rest of the universe of coaching perspectives.  There are SO many schools of thought out there, so many ideas and techniques, but they just aren't penetrating the Iowa/Brands bubble unless the recruit already knew it when he got there.

Call it Iowa bashing if you want, but I don't think I am, as I think this is pretty much factual and hard to refute.  Just look at all the examples of PSU guys losing to Hawks, only to get coached up to flip the series in their favor: RBY-DeSanto, Cass-Kerk, Kemmerer-Starocci, Rathjen-Kasak, and so on.  There's almost no examples going the other way.   There's examples of Iowa improvement, but then they hit the "Brands ceiling" -- the limits of what Brands knows or can solve -- and others pass them by.  That's why there are so few if any recent Hawks who pierced the highest levels who weren't already sui generis when they arrived.  

It will stay this way until they either get rid of Brands, or Brands gets over himself long enough to bring other coaching perspectives into the fold.  I don't see either happening anytime soon, nor do I see any Iowa fans raising any of these concerns, so don't expect anything to change.

Edited by BAC
  • Bob 2
wrestle87 NCAA All-American

wrestle87

Posted
Posted

Wrestling has evolved to be much more fluid and complex than when they were wrestling.

The pre and post Askren and far-ankle scramble eras have made previously "good" positions much more difficult to navigate.  The reshot and far ankle scramble are basically the best thing going right now, so an Iowa bruiser "push push push" style actually exposes wrestlers to a lot of attacks that really weren't prevalent in the brands days.  

Iowa boys can hip heist like the best of them, but successfully navigating leg scrambles and hip to hip positions is an area they don't seem to know how to enter or navigate.

This is a problem considering that this is top-tier folkstyle defense at the moment.  

I will say though, that if some of these guys can actually get through college without too many injuries, their style is well built for the current freestyle ruleset.  

  • Bob 1

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