Great city. I will be there on Friday!
Ben wrestled for the club team, which is NWCA affiliated. I wrestled for them too, and there is not much crossover with the actual D1 team. That being said, he was pretty damn good!
Eh, I see what you mean. As someone who sees no end to his frustrating love of RU Wrestling, the progress that has been made has come at a rather ... glacial pace. At this point, I would rather Goodale stopped giving his "high expectations" speech when media day rolls around every preseason. The win over Illinois was certainly nice, but it doesn't mean you don't give the same fire to Minnesota the next week. Consistency as a dual team is what the program struggles with most (which is crazy, considering Goodale loves duals).
BUT - as previously mentioned in this forum, we are not getting the best of the best in Jersey. When we have, it has sadly blown up in our face more than it hasn't (see: Camplottano, Glasgow, Aragona). The success stories we have had with some our AA's shows that we have developed some real diamonds in the rough (Shawver, Perrotti, Theobold, etc.), but have yet to really develop any blue chipper types into world beaters like upper echelon of the B1G have.
What can be done to change this? I don't think the issues of a distracting location (aka Jersey's proximity to NYC, beaches, etc.) can be so easily rectified; that is what it is. I have always thought that creating a pipeline outside of the Garden State would be the most beneficial to the program, and I think we will start to see that as that appears to be where the program is headed. The issue with having an all-NJ room used to be that these guys all wrestled each other for years, and only really trained to beat one another. In terms of coaching, I think the move for RU now should be find that assistant who can learn the administrative/promotional end that Goodale has gotten down pat. They did drop the ball with that on Pritzlaff, but finding even younger blood than that might be what the program needs in the end.