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Payam Zarrinpour finished 7th in 2007 at 285 to become Sacred Hearts' first, and so far, only AA. Unseeded he upset 10 seed Cody Parker (Cal Poly-SLO) in the first round 12-3. Next he took out 7 seed Matt Fields of Iowa before succumbing in the quarterfinals to Penn State's 2 seed and eventual runner-up, Aaron Anspach. In the blood round he knocked off Iowa State's Dave Zabriskie 9-6. After Zarrinpour lost 7-4 to Wade Sauer of Cal State-Fullerton he finished his run with an 11-8 victory over Bloomsburg's Mike Spaid.

Jackass

Maybe I'm missing something here, but, can someone explain to me what stalling is and what a boring match is? I'm just guessing here, but is a wrestler who is 1-2pts ahead on a top notch, high caliber opponent supposed to take silly risks to please the fans or is he supposed to do what is necessary to win the match for himself and the team? I mean, if one is "stalling" and it's obvious, then he needs to be called, but if he's active and actually wrestling and doing the things as prescribed in the rule book to avoid being called for stalling, even tho he's not scoring and protecting his lead, then what is the problem? Did some of you lose to folks who got ahead, stayed ahead, and killed time effectively and if so, why weren't you ahead so you could have used the same mechanisms to win a match against a very tough opponent. It's easy to run the score up against an inferior competitor, but with top notch guys, you have to play chess and that's just the way it is even if you don't like it. High scoring matches tell me that both wrestlers made a lot of mistakes. That's generally how points are scored in all sports. Low scoring wins tells me that both wrestlers made few mistakes, were very calculating, and did not take foolish risks. A lot of this comes down to coaching. Good athletes are very coachable and understand/learn the nuances of the game. Good coaches know how to "program" their athletes for all kinds of situations. If you have never been to the top of the mountain, you may not understand what it takes to get there. You aren't going to TF or pin everyone. Along the way you're going to win some matches 2-1, 3-2, 4-3, OT, etc., some may be boring or appear to be "stalling," and to expect "fireworks" or "recklessness" to please the crowd for every match is just so unrealistic....and foolish.

What Aaron Brooks did was what we call negative recruiting. He made a point about joining team Jesus by putting down team Mohammed. When Jesus says “No one cometh to the Father, but through me” it is already implied that no one can come to the Father through anyone else (Muhammad or other). There are many excellent reasons to be on team Jesus (I’d encourage y’all to join if you are not already) and those should have been focused on rather than negative recruiting against team Muhammad. If he had done that, no one would be saying anything about him. To put in wrestling context, Cael shouldnt need to put down Rutgers to get guys to come to PSU. He can just explain the benefits of being a Nit and that will do the talking.

Well, Dennis Hopper did explain the migration and assimilation of the Moors to Italy to Christopher Walken in True Romance.

Liquor

I approve of this topic

I found that almost every NCAA rulebook since 1928 can be found on the NWHOF site. I wanted to look up something about the history of minimum and/or mandated mat sizes. But I found something about the actual meaning of pin fall! We, today, think of pin and fall as being equivalent terms. That's not how they thought about them years ago. A fall was when the shoulders touched the mat. For it to be a termination of the match, it had to be pinned down. In other words, in a controlled fashion and for a specified length of time (2 seconds early on). From the 1950 book as an example- RULE 15-FALLS AND NEAR FALLS 1. Pin Falls. Pin falls only shall count. (Flying or rolling falls shall not be considered.) Any part of both shoulders held in contact wIth the mat for an appreciable length of time constitutes a fall. (By an "appreciable length of time" is meant the Referee's sIlent count of two seconds. The two-second count shall start only after the Referee is in such position that he knows positively that both of the defensive contestant's shoulders are in contact wIth the mat, after which shoulders must be held in continuous contact wIth the mat for two seconds before a fall shall be awarded.)

I'm not religious but I believe your approach as described above is sensible and agreeable

So last year after winning NCAA, Brooks cut a promo trashing Muhammad in order to set up a match with Ferrari?

you have no idea how much joy this brings me

wtf is happening here?

I do not like Aaron Brooks based on some of the things he's stated. You can not reasonably compare him to *gestures at the AJ Ferrari of it all* All of this.

Smith and Bono are both Italian. Smith’s mother is Italian, Bono is an Italian name. Bono would fit in well at Rutgers

nothing like drunken uncle conspiracy theories on Thanksgiving

D3

Paul, Thanks for your kind words...Jimmy Brown was my only loss my junior year in HS. He won 3-2 in the State Semi's at 107lbs, and yes, he was pretty tough. My sophomore year at MSU, we were ranked #1 and UM was #2...Jim was UM's 118 and my head coach, Grady Peninger, came into the locker room and told me that he thinks Brown might bump up to 126 to wrestle me since he beat me in HS. That way UM could possibly win the first two matches instead of maybe just one. I was so hoping they would bump him up...but they didn't! They ended up beating us anyway. My history has always been, if I beat someone the first time, I never lose to him in future matches and if I lose to someone the first time, I have never lost the ensuing encounters. So he's one up on me..forever! I had a lot of respect for Jim, for one, I'm not easy to beat and he did it, and two he had a very nice career at UM. The only guy in my entire career to beat me both times we ever wrestled was Mike Frick, Lehigh. In fact at the East/West All Star match in Madison, Wis., in '76 Mike was at 142 and I was at 134. When we were taking the group picture, we were next to each other and I had some brownies and he was eyeing them up and down. I offered a couple of big pieces to him hoping that would make him think about staying at 42...damn, he didn't take any and ended beating me in the finals in Tucson. Look back at some of the guys he beat. I think that year he started at 150 and ended up at 134 for NCAA's. He beat Churella (at 150) in the Midlands that year something like 7-1 but he has nice resume of former and future NCAA champions that he had beaten during his career. Anyway, thanks for your comments and reliving the pain of remembering Jim Brown! haha.

No. Danny declined the "Clear Coat" and Bono wouldn't sign off on the deal.

No, AJ is playing tiddlywinks on his knees.

Thank you.

@pmilkThis is a message board. Don't mistakenly believe that all/any of the folks here know anything or have well thought out ideas. A quick browse around the college and international boards should suffice and if that doesn't do it, head over to the Non Wrestling Topics board for a cornucopia of ignorant...

I’ll be quite happy if they finish close to this. Very young team, we saw how they performed against VT, now let’s see how they perform against quality wrestlers in a tournament format. Most intrigued to see where Geog finishes.

You are correct, sir! From the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association website: https://iwcoa.net/hall-of-fame-2/larry-kristoff/ D3

I t\remember this photo.....is that Larry Kristoff on the right??

Nope

Give me a Space

And again this week, but I have to assume it wasn't forgetting at this point... (at minimum he majored #24...)

It's wild when people think they're playing 3D chess by thinking Brooks is playing 4D chess by thinking AJ Ferrari is playing 5D chess

No, how about 11

It's like the Non Wrestling Topic thread...

... and they should be counted. irish, Scottish, and German All very different people, with very different cultures. Unless you have some preconception about skin color being the major factor, you should see all of these as distinctly different groups. Consider that if you categorize by skin color first, then some would say that makes you a racist.

Lol, I don't know what part of the country you’re from, so I mean this without ridicule, but that era passed us by ~2 generations ago. If you want to count italians, you’re putting yourself in a place where you’ll have to count all the irish, Scottish, and German coaches as well.

The more inclusive term would be ‘Italianx.’ Please get with the times.

he was already taking off the fall semester to preserve Ivy eligibility for the spring but the word is that he reinjured his shoulder and he's dunzo for the year. likely to graduate in the spring and if he wrestles again it won't be for Cornell.

What isn't a minority? If Italian isn't minority surely an Okie Italian is, or is that an Italian Okie?

@AgaveMaria is the crazy uncle at every Thanksgiving dinner. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Lol, Brooks isn’t a “bad boy,” if anything I could see a potential Brooks/Ferrari matchup billed as “Jesus vs the Devil” or something

As anyone who has paid attention to my posts knows, there are a couple of things I hate for their laziness. The generic claims of ducking and stalling. Here we will ignore the former and focus on the latter. I loooooove @pmilk's posts on strategy. After all one man's strategy is another man's stalling. And this can be very tribal. All you need to do to see that is read some of the posts on HR by their fan parody account Ironbird. A recent perfect example is yesterday he complained that Woods would have won by more if the opponent hadn't stalled. In the same post he referred to Arnold's "tuff ride/mat returns to wear a guy down and kill some clock". You know because one is clearly stalling, but the other is strategy. Blah, blah, blah. Digging through @grogs84 data for the 1988 to 2021 NCAA tournaments I thought I would find the wrestlers who won a title while scoring the fewest points. To do this I narrowed it down to wrestlers who won all of their matches by decision on their way to a title. Let's call them the Efficient Eight (really 10 with ties, but I do love alliteration). Why score any more than you need to? It's not like you can use those extra points in later matches. Conserve energy. Don't let 'em see your moves on tape. Good luck scouting all my moves when I only use one per match, if that many. Now that is just smart wrestling. The heavies are, um, heavily represented with 6 of the 10, but it is a middleweight who shall lead them all. While it saddened me to see that no one had won five straight 1-0 matches in OT, Jason Tsirtsis at 149 in 2014 came closest, having won his 5 matches 4-1, 4-3, 2-1 (OT), 2-1 (OT) and 3-1 (OT) for a 15 point total (only 12 in regulation time, awesome). Does anyone know of any wrestlers pre-1988 or post 2021 to score fewer than the world's most efficient wrestler**? *Ok, Ten, so The Taut Ten? ** Guinness verification pending.

Now find where it was removed from the rulebook. You’ve ruined my Thanksgiving for the last time!

Indiana needs somebody new. Escobedo is 8-34 in conference and is more preacher than coach. Goldman had a career 60% win percentage.

Thus proving that 3 point TD rule solves all of wrestling's problems

Ouch. Now obviously have to give credit to Olejnik, not everyone turns these things around. Hamiti is also enormous, the weight might be getting to him. He is also by and large a two-trick pony and may have been figured out. He has sneaky ankle picks, and will try to catch you in a cradle in the transition. These are things that always wow a college fanbase because they rarely happen, but if you are able to avoid being headhunted, and have the strength to stay in good position when he tries to tether-ball himself off your neck in one direction and the other, you’ll most likely be alright.

Nobody is going to make waves at Sacred Heart, glad they have a program and the huge roster but they don't have the schollies or any real way to attract top flight talent.

125 - This is the only weight I don't see a Buckeye potentially wrestling for a medal (sorry). McCrone can beat a lot of the guys in the field, but he would have to beat a lot of guys that are just a little better than him. 133 - Bouzakis could ball out here. He needs a good showing here for confidence, I think. I still think he is well capable of hanging with the top two or three here. I wouldn't pick him over Vito or Fix, though. Not sure we see Cannon here. 141 - This tournament last year was when Hardy turned it on. 8 seed a dominated everybody. Mendez holds a clear advantage on the feet, so if he can avoid the mat he might be okay here. 149 - This weight is so damn deep. I know Lovett is the odds on favorite to win it all this year but I don't know if he makes it through this gauntlet unbeaten. 157 - I don't think we see Teemer here. I also think Paddy could place very highly here. While he is back to focusing on weight management, it is evident he put in some time this offseason. Do I think he beats Robb or Shapiro? No. Do I think he could get a win or two against guys higher ranked than him? Yes. 165 - How much does Hepner's H2H over Amine hold weight here? If folks are smart, they will avoid taking down. I think we end up seeing Carr against Amine in the finals. 174 - Lewis got beat up by Sta(l)rocci. I don't think we see him here. That waters it down quite a bit, but I do like Kharchla to make the finals opposite Griffith. This should be a good tournament for them to get a feel for 174lbs properly, without seeing any of the higher tier gents (aside for themselves) 184 - I want to see more of Hoffman at 184, but my gut is telling me he is right on that level with PK, Foca, Munoz, etc. Depending on seeding he could make a decent, deep run. I am very interested in a Plott match. Both coming in to 184 after being sumstantially different sized rather recently (197lbs for Hoffman VS 79 KG for Plott). I think Foca slides right in and shows that he is here to compete. 197 - Oh lordy-lord... we just saw Brooks beat down Sloan. Will Hidlay manhandle him the same way he manhandled Beard?Cardenas is a sleeper to knock Hidlay off, though. A lot of familiarity there with having seen each other on National Teams. Geog could be in the neighborhood of 7-9 seed there, so he could see one of them early. 285 - Feldman will have a good chance to prove himself against a few gents higher ranked here. I don't think we see Schultzy or Hendrickson there, though. That leaves a slew of other guys to test himself on. Predictions: 125 - McCrone, DNP 133 - Bouzakis, 4th 141 - Mendez, 1st 149 - D'Emilio, 4th 157 - Gallagher, 5th 165 - Hepner, 4th 174 - Kharchla, 2nd 184 - Hoffman, 2nd/3rd (I have him losing to PK, not sure on seeding here) 197 - Geog, 6th 285 - Feldman, 3rd

I think if Steed sucked down to 149 he would not maintain the strength needed.

I think with Mizzou only having 4 Freshman this year and basically them all wrestling at the Tiger Style and Maryville Open. (the ones that were not injured) They are also entered in the Cougar Clash. They had to choose one to skip for the 5 dates and I guess Lindenwood was the one. I know 2nd semester they have the UNO open plus Denker Open and Missouri Valley Open. I can see Mizzou sending their Freshman and Some backups to Midlands as well like last year. Cameron Steed looked really good beating Manibog and Harper. I was at the LU open and that Freshman/Sophomore Division was pretty darn good. It had DIV I redshirt freshman from Bellermine, Northern Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma State, SIU-Edwardsville, Northwestern, Illinois & of course LIndenwood not to mention Central Oklahoma and McKendree from DII I am happy Okie State brought their whole team as well SIU-E. The Lindenwood Open replaced the old St. Louis Open the same weekend. That had a bunch of DI teams like Mizzou, Okie State, Oklahoma, Northwestern, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Northern Illinois Illinois, Purdue, Chattanooga. Plus now defunct programs like Notre Dame, Clemson, BYU, Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State), Eastern Illinois, Illinois State, and Iowa would send their backups. Plus tough DII teams at the time like SIU-Edwardsville, Central Missouri and Central Oklahoma. Plus, all the good JUCO's around Missouri, Illinois, Kansas and Iowa. It was brutal.

Really? Off the top of my head Davis "whiffed" on Cole Conrad, Tim Hartung, Garrett Lowney, Ben Askren, and Alex Dieringer. I believe that is a total of 9 NCAA individual titles, 12 NCAA Finals appearances, 3 Hodge Trophies, 2 Olympians, and 1 Olympic medal. I'm not a Bono apologist, but come on, there has been great Wisconsin prep talent leaving the state for 30 years now.

I was surprised Mizzou didn’t send more wrestlers. Being about 90 minutes from St Charles, Mizzou in the past has sent 15-20 wrestlers. This year 3/4. Obviously they had a dual on Sunday, but to see only a couple attendees was out of the ordinary.