Been thinking about this predicament for the past couple seasons. Hard to imagine a wrestler like Saunders not starting in college. Especially now that he’s made a world team and shown he can beat AA/NQ types (albeit in FS). His performance in the dual against Jack who AA’d only a few weeks later is only evidence I can think of right now that he can do it in folk. On the other hand, without the ability to take a RS or wrestle as a grad, it’s even harder to see Cornella on the bench in his JR season. Especially if he comes back healthy enough to still be an AA threat. So I think Vince gets the nod even if he loses a wrestle-off… as you mentioned, he beat Fernandez in OT during an early season open but didn’t start, likely due to whatever the room dynamic was and Grey’s sense that Fernandez would be better against common opponents. UNLESS Cornella is too far from 100% yet AND Saunders proves himself to be the better option against other competition; a tall task considering how proven Cornella is against this 141 field. Fernandez has also grown into the weight at 149 after making the jump from 133. So size may be a factor in an attempt to unseat Fernandez, and even more so if he first tries to take the spot at 141, which makes sense after getting used to being down at 65 kg. Also interesting in the sense that it’s probably not an outcome Big Red fans were expecting, is how similar the resumes are becoming between Cornella and Fernandez, who wasn’t nearly the recruit Cornella was coming out of HS. I think he just made the big board at #296 while Cornella was top 100 maybe even top 50. Both became EIWA champs with almost identical win/loss records after 2 seasons and very similar NCAA tournament runs (defeated qualifers from the MAC, lost to high AA’s, and lost winnable matches to Swiderski). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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