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Shane isn’t there because he’s a hype guy - he’s there because he works his butt off and earned the right to be the lead guy. He’s always “on” and his hype isn’t a schtick. Hype guys don’t do research and appreciate action like Shane does. He’s excitable and has a nearly unmatched passion for the sport.

Sammy Sasso said it when asked about that recruiting class a couple/few years back: tOSU and Ryan are trying to build a Dynasty to rival Penn State and everyone coming in (Mendez/Bouzakis class and Rogotzke/Kilkeary class) all believe in themselves, each other, and the coaching staff.

On a big night they did a nice job. Not too much. I have found the enthusiasm of Sparks too much at times, but seems like he dialed it back just enough and was enjoyable. “Will Lewan doing Will Lewan things” after his ride out escape in .02 and win was a great line and just right.

I'm a huge Penn State homer but even I can admit Davis was taken down and probably gave up 2 back points in the final session. That was DEFINITELY home cooking there for Davis.

Because he's a play-by-play guy, he's not an analyst. They are two different roles. The color commentator goes into the weeds with technique, nuance. That's not what the lead broadcaster's role is. Shane's knowledge on the sport is more than the basic "down and distance" type of thing, but he's also not going to throw things at you that drown out the important things - the action on the mat. I will whole-heartedly agree with you on one point though - we aren't the target market. Hell, I'm fortunate enough to be a voice at the NCAA championships and I know most of the fans in the building know more about the sport from a technical point of view than I do - but my role isn't to explain the sport to people. It's "down and distance" with a sprinkling of stats, history and nuggets of information. I live in the weeds with the stats and records, but I don't with the technical parts of the sport. Those of us on the boards usually fall under the umbrella of "we already know about what we're watching" so you're right there. We aren't the target demo. I've spent a lot of time on the broadcast side for a number of sports - the guy leading the broadcast is going to focus on leading the broadcast and setting up the analyst. Too much inside baseball for a niche sport like wrestling would turn more viewers away than it would bring them in. We'd still watch, but that's about it.

Not really. I can understand not calling it in real time. But there’s no way that shouldn’t have been overturned on replay.

No one wants to watch Will Lewan wrestle for an hour

Aside: for those of you haven't seen it, I recommend the "Vito" film on FLO. Yianni has a big role in it, too.

1 second of riding time difference is absurd given how imprecisely the end of riding time is determined. It is like dragging out the chains to impose a phony perception of precision in footballl games. There are so many sources of measurement error but we will just pretend them away and use an index card between the ball and stick to decide first down. Theater.

Should have been a TD and 2 NF IMO rewatching it a couple times

In the D3 national finals a couple years back two brothers wrestled

The “/s” means sarcasm, it’s a Reddit thing. Sorry for not being more clear folks lol

I thought his style wouldn’t translate to top tier D1 wrestling. But I was wrong. Yeah he’s taken some losses this year particularly early in the season, but he looked really good against Nagao. He also appears to be a great teammate, for example he’s often the first guy congratulating other guys after a win. Not sure what happened with the handshake snub from the PSU bench. I’m gonna guess they weren’t looking or something but I laughed.

This is just 100% not true. The hand touch rule change was not applicable here. It was also not neutral danger nor does anyone think it is. OSU was behind the arms with :05 left then PSU went to his back for a count and got off his back with about :01. It was an obvious TD. It's not PSU hate, its hate toward the official and the ridiculous application of reaction time that had a direct impact on the match outcome. I thought Woods was pinned too but haven't seen a definitive replay nor would it have changed the match, which is why their isn't as much outcry.

but he didn't.

I'm not salty, YOU'RE SALTY!

Could also be his 4th annual senior night honor!

Tom Ryan politely asking for refs not to review their own calls Kevin Ward/Mark Branch taking a different approach

Bring back ties in dual meet bouts. Maybe keep the first SV period within duals and after that it’s a tie. Obviously for elimination tournaments you need overtime and tie breaks. If you can’t be ahead on points after 9 minutes, I don’t really care about perfect fairness. Current rules are fine.

Truth. And as a diehard PSU fan I can also be shocked that was not called a TD, either live or upon review.

They think it's cute to do that but the amount of trash calls their program gets because cael is sitting in the corner is outrageous. Every year at ncaa some great wrestlers get completely screwed by refs so these blue singlets can advance another round. And im not suggesting it's intentional but I am suggesting it's undeniable.

Is there any recourse to have a NCAA purview of the referee's in the Penn State match. Specifically the 125 match. I would say 95 percent of college referees get that call right without any video review. I would say with the video review it would be 99.5 percent of the referee's would get that call right. It was without a doubt takedown 3 points and 2 points for backs and it isn't even close.

That’s why I said I can understand not calling it in real time. But with instant replay and 2 refs, there is no excuse for not calling that a TD. It wasn’t a danger takedown, it was a regular takedown, and probably nearfall.

Sparks is a plus for sure. The caffeination can sometimes overwhelm you but it's hard as a wrestling fan to hold it against him that he unabashedly loves wrestling. He does handle the PBP job professionally. He does a good job of getting a lot out of Gibbons, who we're lucky to have, and whose calm demeanor matches up well with the Sparks enthusiasm. And Sparks is way better than Tim Johnson at working stats and history anecdotes into the flow of the match rather than as a data dump that interferes with the action.

The scramble in question begins around 8:40

It was literally last season.

What did you think?

Not so fast, my friend. Not everyone on this board thinks every missed match is a duck.

Finally got to watch the replay and I thought Ohio State was better than expected. They certainly deserved more than 9 team points. They were never going to win the dual, but they should feel pretty good about their effort. Kilkeary was robbed. That's three (at least) all day. Bouzakis came out swinging and held on. It's a good win for a guy who looked lost earlier this year. Credit to Bartlett for blocking his way to a win. Mendez (or Menendez) couldn't get through that collar tie. The neutral danger was close, but it looked like Bartlett had the better position on that exchange via his counter and likely would have scored either way. Rogotzke is one of those guys you want to watch. Truax was having his way with him, until he was counting lights. Mesenbrink and Brooks are unreal. Kerk is stomping everyone across from him. The officiating left many things to be desired.

Because the Hocks don’t have a bunch of transfers

Easy to bridge when you're using your shoulders.

I think we all lost that match

The only rule that changed was getting rid of the hand-touch takedown, where a hand touching from a rear standing position (which this was not) was the only situation where no reaction time was given. There has been no change to the rule for all other takedowns needing to be “beyond reaction time,” even though it seems to be extended this year. I know there have been a few other controversial ones so far this year, but most of the others were debatable , this one was clear as day. Even most PSU fans I’ve seen are saying it should have been a TD, and I have not seen a single non-PSU fan actually defend it.

2 things should happen as a result of the this match: 1) That official shouldn't be allowed to ref big time matches or NCAAs. It was that bad of a (no) call. 2) Eliminate officials reviewing their own calls. There is no point anymore and it is just wasting time if they are not going to look at it with an open mind. I guess it might be too expensive for every match to have an independent 3rd party, but then we need to eliminate reviews because they are currently pointless.

I think Jombo exhausted himself after Franek-Lewan

Funny to see Gomez honored during Senior night after enrolling in the school less than a month ago.

Mineo is saying that the reason Amine didn't wrestle last night is that he was a couple minutes late for the skin check and Tom "They just broke a minor rule and the kids should be allowed to wrestle" Brands threw a hissy fit about it and got him DQd. Just when you think Iowa couldn't be any more soft this kind of stuff comes out...

2.5 pts for reversal might eliminate a bunch of ties and OT. Would actually give an incentive for reversal vs straight escape.

Just rewatched the match Yianni pretty clearly drives his own forehead hard into the mat on his takedown from elevation. He immediately holds his forehead after and is very slow returning to his feet. That he got slower and more sluggish as the match went on points to concussion to me. Hopefully not, but that is what worries me. If he is even slightly concussed I hope his team realizes this is unimportant and does not risk further injury.

Their you go! Grate job!

I am also not a PSU fan but ultimately it will count as a win and not effecting seeding in anyway also kinda evens out the illegal cutback Vinnie hit on him at dapper dan I guess. I just think this reaction time thing is crazy I personally did not think it was even a position where danger needed to be counted I thought he was on his back long enough that it was just a takedown.

Sports fans are generally all about the won-lost column, and this especially describes wrestling and its fans, where after a handful of minutes of competition a winner - and a loser - is declared. The success and/or failure of an athlete is very black-and-white in our sport. With the arrival of NIL and the ability of a mere handful of teams to compete for the raw talent in that market, the pools of premiere talent will congregate in a very few schools (we already are seeing it). This concentration of talent will lead to a competitive imbalance, i.e., the strong teams will increase the distance between themselves and the weaker teams (whose numbers will far out-number the teams with money and talent) will fall away and fan-interest will wither and dissipate. In time, you will literally only have a handful of powerful, sustainable teams who will only have each other to compete against - a small cluster of maybe five to ten teams who nobody else other than their own respective fan-bases care about. There won't be enough teams against which to compete in order to have a "season." I can't think of any other sports model where this is sustainable. This concentration of money and talent will surely kill our sport as part of the collegiate experience; it will be lucky to continue even as a club sport because it is such a grueling experience for the wrestlers themselves. The club version used by the rest of the world may be the only sustainable version, but that is a significantly foreign model for Americans to swallow as much of our sporting system has been integrally tied to our educational system. Sadly, I think we are in the midst of the end of our folk style sport as we have known it for the past century.

He looked like he was hanging on for the W from around the 4th minute. Possibly winded ? At the end he made some desperation attack and it looked like his feet wouldn’t move at the pace he was used to expecting them. Maybe that Midlands injury messed him up. I didn’t see that match. I wasn’t impressed with this performance at all.

One thing’s for sure. Woods is no Nick Lee. Actually two things, Woods is no Sebastian Rivera either.

You're drunk. Woods will be fine.

Not to mention Ohio State. At the time we all thought the skin check issue was a fake duck by Lemley, but as it turns out it was Mendez that paid off the skin check guy to avoid the match

He's looked good all year, and is improving all the time, although one win doesn't necessarily mean he's a title contender.

Agreed. Which is exactly why duals are so exciting and so important for wrestling. Great chance tonight to bring more Michigan fans into the fold. Anyone who says duals don't matter should be taken behind the woodshed.

Lewan is like intermission, but with team points for it.

That IS a tech fall in Will Lewan's book.