wrestle87

[gasp!] Are you suggesting that wrestling success comes from having a long term established culture of wrestling, coaches who know how to build and maintain a team while also bettering their individual athletes, and a broader community that cares about, invests in and supports that effort?! The gall of you to suggest such a thing!

I have gotten way too invested in advocating for certain positions, especially for athletes I think are getting a raw deal or are being done dirty by their coaches or their school. I also miss sarcasm in posts or interpret it incorrectly, which is kind of a prerequisite skill to have when interacting on a message board with any level of deftness or nuance.

This one's tough because Cornell was really good with the Grey Koll combo. Koll is great at the upward management, Grey clearly runs a good room. Them being separated has really diluted their success. Grey is still the one who holds down the NJ pipeline, and between the two of them is clearly the technique wizard. Koll going program-hopping in recent years doesn't really improve my estimation of his coaching ability.

That's amazing news that he was allowed to wrestle tonight. Having anything other than competition be the reason for the end of any portion of a career just sucks.

The fact that he came back and got wins is amazing. It's cliche to say "truly inspirational", but it really really is that he was able to accomplish that.

I don't have time to teach you anatomy and physiology, there is a tremendous difference there. I'm sure spenser has strong legs compared to the average person, but this is an entirely relativistic sport. They are obviously quite weak compared to Ono's. Ono overpowered spenser, and he did it with his legs.

I'm sure this was included to make your point, but do you not see the immense difference in muscular development between these two sets of legs?

To be clear and fair, oh captain our collective captain, the judgement is being passed because an adult failed to keep his head and acted like an enormous child. Punches thrown or not, in acting like a child, this angry 50 year old stomping up into the stands contributed to, even precipitated, what is very likely the premature end of his own son's amazing high school career in a terrible fashion. Not to mention certainly putting his son's college enrollment on far less stable footing. Ivy's tend not to be too keen on the "missed senior post-season due to participation in brawl" look. So, in one fell swoop, a middle-aged man successfully added "prevented my son from chasing the rarest of achievements in high school wrestling" AND "put my son's ivy league offer of admission at considerable risk." I do believe that is where the (very justified) judgement, derision and disapproval is coming from. Sleeves alone aren't THAT big of a deal.

@Husker_Du Really? What are we doing here?

Spencer is statically strong in his upper body, but nobody on earth has every accused him of being explosive, and that's what Ono did to him, especially hips down. You don't ever want to give spencer the opportunity to use his gorilla grip on you, but strength is only as strong as its foundation. Spencer has small very injured legs. Japanese wrestlers, the men in particular, are built like brick *I poop my pants, don't laugh at me*houses in the legs across the board. Ono got hip to hip with spencer and overpowered him laterally. Getting pushed laterally is unfortunately not aided by being good at pullups.

This would in fact be a tremendous story, and if it gets overturned and knox performs, would bode real well for his college career. The gameness it takes to go from high school career ended (and college in jeopardy) to getting reinstated, making weight, and wrestling are tremendous. Tonight is definitely one of the wildest weight cut of this kid's life.

This is a great point, as much as its important to respect and protect the decorum of athletic events, you can't just arbitrary deem the entire gymnasium "the bench", and you can't put athletes in a position to not protect or defend themselves if sleeveless TRT comes rumbling at you. I am not taking a position on what knox did, but deeming the bleachers the "bench" would put athletes in a position to have to just eat whatever heat was thrown their way by a random aggro passerby in the gym who just blows their top.

You will recall as much as we all do (I’m old Region 5), the three weeks from districts to regions to states do some weird things for seniors for some reason. Seems like every few years a kid who seems like a shoo-in for a #1 seed and a finals appearance just…gets the yips, flops out or goes bonkers and bounces out early. I remember watching a few back in the day, it was always so strange, but it was also almost always in the air come regions and states.

This is impressive and absolutely insane. I hope Yianni keeps some of himself for the rest of his life after he hangs the shoes up. Reminds me of a story my brother told me about his college(low-tier 1AA) football coach kicking a kid off the team bc he wanted to come back after his 4th knee surgery. Coach just looked at him and said no, go live your life, football has taken all that I will allow it to take from you. I feel like having that conversation with yianni. Honestly probably vito at this point too.

Yianni is amazing, and abilitywise he is hands down our best wrestler at this weight, but this is a crap ton of joints to have surgery on. Wasn’t it both elbows, at least one knee, and now a hip?

Holy smokes, is yianni really 5’5”? That is way shorter than I thought he was…

These are some very valid points. I think they may be the front runners in adopting the Deon Sanders recruiting guidelines, let guys prove themselves elsewhere then recruit them in the transfer portal once they have proven themselves. They've got a consistent enough track record of eligibility swiping that they may just be bleeding edge front-runners in this practice. They know that good guys at small programs want to be respected and paid better. Carver does that big time. I don't know how long they'll be able to do it for, but this is sort of where we have to see ho NIL continues to shake out long term.

Scrolled all the way waiting for somebody to remember this guy. If you tech somebody in the NCAA finals by riding legs, you're pretty darn good at it. My knowledge only extends to around 2000, but Mitch Clark, Derek Moore and the brothers Perry were both incredible leg riders, Derek Moore from what I recall was a total cross-body monster, the brothers Perry were almost exclusively short boots. I'd also like to throw out a question about best weight-cutters of all time. Mitch Clark might be amongst them. I remember reading from his book way back in the day that even though he wrestled at 177, he stepped on the scale at over 200 pounds just before that match.

I really approached this incorrectly from a linguistic perspective, the Brands are a collective and you won't have nearly the success within the program without having both of them there. I think they're the #2 GM(s), probably #5 coaches from a development standpoint. They're the #1 coaches for 125-133, but for the rest of the weights I put them around #10. Board enthusiasm aside, I don't think any of us have the connections or experience to run that program for a day. We would also have to come up with capable doppelgangers while staying away from a bizarro-superman type outcome.

Highly underrated comment right here...

Manning definitely is in the conversation for the #2. Brands brothers are definitely #2 if not #1 in program management, which is a perpetually dismissed portion of a successful franchise. In football terms, they may not be in the conversation for being the best athlete developers, but they definitely are when it comes to the General Manager side of managing the program. At this point, a part of keeping your program relevant is simply being continuously talked about. It keeps butts in seats and dollars in your wallet. And dollars are oxygen.

What hallucination are you living in where the brands that stepped on the mat a few days ago was qualitatively the same wrestler who got those big wins? Those wins happened how many years ago? Did you ever spend time in a college room and notice what happens to ~50% of the guys in there, peaking around year 2-3 and then falling off because their joints can’t keep up with the mileage? ”And if reasonably healthy” is the biggest mickey’s magic kingdom fairy dust add-on, brands had tape from his ankle to his hip, he didn’t hit his knee offensively until the last second of the match. Kennedy is at least mobile, can use both his legs and is capable of scoring points besides an escape. I’ll take the wrestler who put pinto on his back and had him on the ropes over the guy whose big moment was a 3rd period escape against hamiti. Cast your wishes in your own mirror, I just want to watch interesting matches with wrestlers who can actually still wrestler. Brands is no longer in that category.

This is likely true, and would be john smith levels of home cooking to the detriment of the team. The Brands we saw last night is not going to get more than two wins at ncaa's, and likely won't get higher than 7th at big tens. Kennedy has a much higher ceiling than that. Brands is clearly very beat up, you can just tell when a guy has multiple joints giving out, they get hesitant and don't want to commit because something is already broken and they don't want it to get worse. I highly suspect this is what Cam Amine is facing. He doesn't wrestle freely anymore. Even if he was always conservative, wrestling clearly physically hurts in a way it didn't use to. Arnold belongs at 174, and is missing out because he likely agreed to be the team player even though he is clearly better than both 174 options. Absolute strength is a level-setter, and he has more horsepower than anyone else on the team can bring at 174. Too bad he got the royal screw job. If they really wanted, would they be allowed to start Gabe and just let him hack his way through Big 10's with no wins? Or does he not qualify because he didn't have enough matches at that weight?

I don't disagree. The rubber only meets the road from here. It's gotta be a pretty hearty assault on the ego too, coming into college with some legit credentials, having to let go of football (intelligently) in pursuit of wrestling, but then just getting big brothered. How he finishes this year will be very impactful for how the next two years go for him. I hope he is able to recenter, but he's up against one of the toughest cohorts of heavies I can remember since the early 2000's.

The only rejoinder that iowa fans have had for the past 15 years since the front row on the outside become the expected standard for where their team race starts and finishes each year.