TylerDurden

I can envision the Brands getting stuck and needing a different type of shovel. I retract my statement. Jokes aside, I appreciate the recruiting effort that puts them at his house for the social media-famous 5 a.m. workout out, regardless of the need for shoveling and/or the appropriate tools for the job.

I'm not arguing that Rivera sucks. They guy went 115-20 for his career and finished 6/3/4/3. He's very good. I just think Mendez is better.

Someone get these guys a snow shovel.

For sure. Rivera is/was very good. While I was just thinking about their relative collegiate levels, I'll also be pumped if Mendez ends up with Olympic medals. If he sticks at 65KG it will be tough, but Mendez does have a U20 World silver and impressive domestic wins against McKenna, Green, Yanni and Garrett (TF) at the US Olympic Trials last year, losing to Zain, 3-2.

I think this is the sort of rhetoric people take issue with regarding Feldman. No one is saying he's bad, but he's taken losses to guys many of us don't expect to be anywhere near NCAA titles, thus a reluctance to simply crown him as next in line. Case in point: the 2024 NWCA All-Star Classic. Yes, I know Ghadiali's out for the year.

The problem with this is that I'm not sure Mendez would take out Parco. I say this as a Mendez Stan. He's my favorite current NCAA wrestler to watch. He's a bulldog. He has sought out competition and has some really impressive results. When I read this, I had flashbacks to Rivera bumping up to wrestle Micic and getting absolutely worked over. On a relative scale, I think Mendez is better than Rivera, and Parco isn't quite as good a Micic, but he is a four-time AA and a title contender at 149. So while I don't think Mendez would be beaten like Rivera was, it's a tall task to ask him to bump up and beat a guy like Parco for a dual they aren't winning as a team anyway.

Dee

Ohio State has a wrestling team. They win.

To be fair, he pretty much called the only way Van Dee could score - through exchanges. He hit a seven-point move in the first period and put Davis in a chase position the rest of the match. He just did it on a counter instead of a bad shot.

There's a better chance Penn State shuts them out than there is Nebraska being up 15-0.

I feel like this is a text message exchange with my elderly mother.

It's part of the deal with B1G+. The Student U broadcasts are hands-on learning that happens to be broadcast on a relatively large outlet. It's also a way for BTN to make some money with a cheap broadcast production. Sometimes you get guys who know what they're talking about, but other times you'll get a complete noob. The only way you can "hold their collective feet to the fire" is to not subscribe.

Because that's what it is this year and it's where I would likely have projected Carroll's ceiling to be if he went to HWT as opposed to 197. Next year obviously could be different, of course. Feldman and Carroll were basically dead even as HS recruits. The difference is Feldman stayed in one spot, committed to HWT and has slowly grown into the weight class after his injury. Carroll went another direction. Call it a Tale of Two Tweeners. Carroll's body needs time to adapt to the lower weight and it may never adapt so that he's consistently able to perform at a high level. If it doesn't, we might see him at HWT anyway. Time will tell.

Perhaps and I think that might be a better weight class for him, but he'd basically be Feldman, but a tad shorter. Some some mid-to-low AA ceiling. He *could* adapt his body to either weight given time, but being as how his best weight is probably 97KG the cut to 197lbs isn't likely to be kind to him for at least this year. I think that's reflected in his results to date. Also, I think we sometimes forget how good DI wrestlers are and expect all of the top recruits to come in a dominate.

He's a tweener Edit: Didn't see the previous reply saying the same thing...but it's still true.

Can someone translate, please?

In no particular order: Nick Lee, Penn State Lincoln McIlravy, Iowa Ben Askren, Missouri Leroy Vega, Minnesota Reece Humphrey, Ohio State Chris Fleeger, Purdue Travis Lee, Cornell Ed Ruth, Penn State Jason Nolf, Penn State Spencer Lee, Iowa Alex Dieringer, Oklahoma State Logan Steiber, Ohio State Adam Tirapelle, Illinois There's a ton more I enjoyed watching.

You must be new to the internet.

I heard he wanted to go to a football school.

I'm not a PSU fan. The issue was that they dropped him to the No. 9 seed, which was as asinine now as it was then. It screwed up the entire bracket by punishing him (everyone else) for not wrestling twice (and the missing RPI). They didn't need to give him the No. 1 seed, but there wasn't a rational argument for him be the No. 9 even if you act like he wrestled and lost - which is what I said then and is still true today.

Agree about Sasso. It's a great story and I'm happy he's back competing, but with the way he looks right now, he's might not get an auto spot out of the B1G.

Interestingly enough, I think both Goldman and Escobedo tried/is trying to be more than a bottom feeder in different ways. Goldman hoped that podium finishes would lead to building a stronger team (it didn't - his dual record was abysmal, especially toward the end of his tenure). A top-down approach. Escobedo seems to be taking the opposite approach, while still trying to hit the home run in recruiting, by building the room depth. He's undoubtedly built more room depth than Goldman - which is a good thing - but the problem is that it still puts you in the bottom half of the B1G and the record is still something like 3-5 in duals. I mentioned this in the previous post, but unless there's a ton of money about to flow into IU Wrestling's NIL fund, they're going to have a hard time ever competing for high-end portal guys and recruits. At the current investment level, IU's ceiling is probably 8-9th at the B1Gs. Heck, they had 6 NCAA qualifiers last year and finished 12/14. They had more NCAA qualifiers than Wisconsin, Purdue, Michigan State, Maryland, Northwestern and Illinois. Having said all of that, IU is now a football school and football money is huge, so you never know!

Maybe they don't like living in Wisconsin.

I can agree with the idea that he's still searching for that breakthrough recruit. I know that they've been close on a few, but close doesn't count. He's not exactly working with the same resources as the top-end of the B1G and the dynamic is 180-degrees different from when Goldman was in charge - portal, NIL, etc. IMO, he's going to have to convince one of the top in-state kids to stay home and be the face of the program...and help bring another guy or two with him. There are talented kids from the state and have been for a while - Parris, Red, Nick Lee, Davison, Mendez, Lemley, Brayton Lee, Micic, Hildebrandt, Tsirtsis, Howe...AA-types and some National Champ contenders. Having CJ Red on staff may help, but I do agree that a seasoned recruiter would be beneficial.

I don't think anyone is a solid favorite over O'Toole in folkstyle. I know we all fall into the trap of looking at freestyle results when trying to predict folk matches, but it just doesn't translate cleanly.