BruceyB

Well, with the rule change you would give your backup headgear to your coach prior to the stepping on the mat. Like the old "blood rag check" in FS the ref would confirm each coach has their athlete's spare. But I agree, if you have an issue with your headgear, finish the match without it.

I agree. In college, we were all given new headgear at that beginning of the year, and everyone already had their own anyway. It seems reasonable that every athlete has a "backup" headgear in their bag incase something happens. I also agree with making headgear optional in matches, but I think it would have to follow the international rules where you can request your opponent removes it. I would hate to wrestle someone like Vito wearing the old CK hard plastic headgear. FWIW, I got my ears busted in practice.

Rokfin

Ah I forgot to mention this in my above post. I thought 100% when KOT's grip on the leg broke that the match was over. I couldn't believe that he was able to recover and gain the advantage from there. He was stretched out, left with one hand on the leg and turned it into a favorable scramble.. It was honestly remarkable that he was able to score from that position.

TBH, I didn't start watching college wrestling until 2007. I shamefully admit that although I've watched a lot of wrestling that happened before 2007, I have never watched Jon Trenge.. I just know if him from talk. Care to provide a link to a match showing how good he really was? I'd love to watch.

I completely agree. Unless you are able to get in and finish cleanly, getting to Keegan's legs is really like 1/4 of the battle for a lot of wrestlers. I'm jealous that you'll get to watch the matchup in person. I can't imagine a boring match between them. If you don't mind my asking as I'm new, I know your an Okie guy and regularly attend events, are you near Stillwater?

Something happened being that not many can hold up against the unrelenting pressure of Mesenbrink. I'm not a PSU guy, but MM puts on a pressure that matches, or I would argue surpasses that pace that peak Metcalf put on his opponents. You can score early, but you also have to be able to hold him off in the third. When it comes to Hamiti, I think he is close to the level, but he's definitely an underdog going into a match against either. I don't think those matches are a toss up, but I think he's close enough that if he wrestles a great match, he can certainly pull an upset.

The majority was correct. KOT was obviously the favorite on this board.

I would argue he didn't have KOT's arm pulled as much as KOT was grabbing around his neck with his right arm while his left was around the leg so he could push the head away while pulling the leg in.. and then Haines put the leg in to prevent himself from sliding off. It was close either way, but I didn't feel that KOT ever stopped improving his position despite the leg coming in and slowing his improvement. Obviously I was rooting for Keegan, but I also want calls to be correct, and in the moment I was afraid they were going to call a premature TD for Haines because I wanted the position to play out. I also wish they would have waited to call the takedown until Keegan had it confirmed beyond a doubt and given Levi a chance to scramble (I think the TD was eminent, but would have preferred the situation played out fully). If leg in position happened with Haines starting on top, I think most people would say that Keegan was in a better position for a reversal than Haines was from maintaining control.. Because he really didn't have any control in that position, it just resembled being on top, despite not having control.

I think to be the "best to never win" you should have probably either been the heavy favorite to win, or been stopped by an all-time great. Tyler Caldwell fits the latter situation where he was likely good enough to win at least one, if not multiple titles but suffered NCAA losses to 3 of the best to ever do it. Hazewinkel fits the former where he was the odds on favorite to win his senior year, and Donahue pulled a huge upset to stop him from becoming champion. But really I think Fix would probably be my pick. He was a common pick his freshman year against Suriano, the first RBY final, and it was still a coin flip going into their second final. Not many would have picked Vito over him during Vito's first run to a championship, and this past season was probably the first time many didn't consider him at least a 50/50 favorite to win. He was on the level for so many years but was never able to put the whole run together. Another guy that I think gets forgotten is Joey Dance. He was phenomenal during the regular season, and just found a way to fall short at the big dance. Alan Waters was another guy I think of that was really tough but couldn't put the full tournament together. I wouldn't put either of these as "the best" but worth a little trip down memory lane.

Wouldn't that pull his red shirt? He has 1 or 2 dates left. Not sure the exact amount.

I'm assuming they are saving him for conference duals. If they were going to use him against PSU, he would have wrestled the other too matches as well.

I'm not questioning Keegan's power necessarily. I just thought that standing next to each other, Haines looked noticeably bigger. I didn't think this the last two years with David Carr who I feel like has a similar build to Haines.

What a match. Did not disappoint whatsoever. Low scoring but man both guys were super active in the hand fight and looking to score, especially in the second and third. I was shocked at how much bigger Levi looked than Keegan. It looked like a 165 wrestling a 174 which I didn't expect, as Askren has often commented on how Keegan is plenty big enough for 174. I certainly don't feel any more confident going into their next match. But that was a treat of two amazing wrestlers going after it.

It was the spiderman meme. Both guys afraid to shoot and give up a reattack. Edmond finally takes a shot.. gives up the reattack..

KOT is really the only chance for MIZZ to avoid the shutout, correct? Lilledahl wins 5-4 over Gage Walker.

Chill bro, it was a joke. But an OT win over Little doesn't exactly equal a lock for a national championship, bud.

Well luckily Buchanon is more a product of WYO and UO.

It's in 26 minutes.

I was wondering the same thing. Depending on how the rest of the year goes, going into the offseason knowing you can work towards truly filling in at 197 would be a lot more appealing than preparing to suck down to 184. And then what the Mirasola's think about that..

Barr with the win over Little 4-1 OT

I agree, but if you can get an escape in less than a minute, you basically give yourself 3 minutes to get a takedown and if you can't, you go to rideouts.. if you choose neutral, you have to score a takedown in 2 minutes against someone who knows they just need to defend to win. With Bailey it's been more his lack of urgency once taking neutral against both Byrd and Davis. He never really put a sprint on against either of them. A couple of attacks from space, but that's about it.

just search rokfin. It's streaming under their account.

I had a tab with the stream open while on youtube hoping that if it went back on rokfin that I'd maintain access for already having it running, but then I tried to open up Mat 2 and can't get through to the website.

We'll see what happens once everyone hops back over to the rokfin stream.