wrestle87

Ah, so he was really sick of hearing the chirping from his former lady friend's new guy...

This has definitely happened. Many of the best guys usually show up with ~15-20 matches on the books for the season at NCAA's, meaning they enter their conference tournament with 10-15. I think this development is part of a transition that college wrestling is undergoing, both in terms of the goals of the program and the capabilities of the athletes. Factor #1: To be a good college guy, you need to have international aspirations. The level of wrestling that the average 20 year old is bringing to the mat has gone up tremendously in the past 10 years. Folkstyle is not the only metric that programs are evaluated on, and even previously folkstyle-heavy programs are making their way towards international styles. I think college coaches are scheduling match-load on an annual basis, factoring in peaking for international tournaments and international styles, bc there are definitely kids who excel more at those styles than folkstyle. If that's the case, why beat up their bodies for limited return on a folkstyle mat when they can bring you a world medal in another style? Perfect examples of this are Braxton Amos, Taylor Lamont, and Ryan Mango, to name a few. If these guys hadn't been put through it for folkstyle, they would have been much fresher for international competition. Factor #2: There are no good midseason tournaments anybody cares about anymore. Midlands isn't even a shell of it former self, it's faint shadow. And the scuffle, which killed midlands is also headed the same way. I lay this mostly at the feet of the season being too long, and coaches seeing minimal benefit to beating their kids up around the holidays and still 2-3 months out from NCAA's. Nobody ever looks back and says "Yeah that person was great, they won midlands, or they won the scuffle" College wrestling is a one-tournament sport. Nobody cares what happened during the regular season, and this, selectively, makes the regular season less meaningful year over year.

Related to this, for the Iowa faithful, who are you most pleasantly surprised with in terms of their development or performance this year? Iowa doesn't have a ton of blue chip names in the lineup, but nevertheless the room has still seen a lot of guys step up and keep Iowa very much in the discussion all year. Glazier has already done the entire wrestling community a tremendous favor this year...

So is this the "he was really sick the morning of the dual" situation? Or was he actually sick the morning of Okie State?

Thanks for posting that. And wow, I particularly enjoyed how the coverage just jumped for a solid minute during one of the most exciting segments of one of the most exciting matches, that was really nice.

Cardenas could totally be wearing a Michigan M next year. He legit looks like he could fit in very well there, Miles Amine is in the room, I think Deiringer still is, and the potential of havinb Griffith and Davison if they choose to go after freestyle stuff. That is a stacked room. Obviously, the only better room for someone his size would be where Dake went to, but that would be so predictably boring.

Oh yeah, Iowa guys go out there and fall flat all the time. I would say the Carver experience is probably what makes them all outperform at NCAA's, bc even big tens and NCAA's are a less charged environment than Carver.

I might venture that out of the Ivies, Brown is the school which is least supportive of its athletics. While doing rather well with business placement and having strong grad programs, the school is also a notable hippy farm, which is an identity they very much embrace. It is also typically an identity for which organized athletics is completely anathema. I hope they get better and have stronger support, but Brown is pretty close to the bottom of all D1 programs both in terms of success and long term viability.

Sorry, yes Missouri too, I knew I forgot one...though, after their performance this past weekend against Okie State my omission may have been justified were it intentional.

That's pretty darn good, and I did not realize that. At least assuming that their lineup they used against PSU is who they will be going with, they only have two wrestlers currently ranked in the top 8. Now, even if a few guys break through and outplace their current standing, which is possible (but also very possible that they don't), each of those teams in my mind has way more high placing firepower. Again, the ol' dual vs tournament situation. If i've got to pick a team I think will accumulate the most points in a head to head at the ncaa's situation, I would pick each of those teams to place better than Ohio State.

The topic is about placement at NCAA's. It is the oldest story in the book that good dual teams and good tournament teams are not the same thing.

That dude did have a bad day. I was watching that match and, while pulling for PSU, they were on the receiving end of a bunch of hometown calls that evening. One that comes to mind that's gotten minimal discussion is Bartlett's OT takedown...that really wasn't a takedown.

Did either of you catch the Okie State Mizzou match? THAT ref was out of position for like 5 different sets of backpoints.

I don’t argue that it was a nice move, whoever it was doesn’t change the rules around a pin. They showed his shoulders on the broadcast, they were nowhere close to both being in contact with the mat.

This is an astonishing debate, but I really don’t think it can be had enough, bc puberty sure as heck isn’t stopping anytime soon. How do you work around the notion that: 1) bad things happen, and people who are pregnant as a result of these terrible things are still required to have that child in some states? 2) Reproductive capability occurs ~ a full decade before feasible parenthood in our society today? Also, I definitely expect we will see businesses and homebuyers voting with their feet, lots of these anti-abortion laws have been on the books ready to go into affect since roe v. wade first came down. This is a reality that is going to really drag down a lot of different states. You will see major divestment from most of the population 40 and under.

And why no discussion and reconfirmation of what actually makes a pin? Truax had looots of daylight under his shoulder blade, and woods was completely glued.

Consistency is a problem for that crew, and they do have some good guys, all of their best guys on the may could just as easily get bounced before the blood round. They are very heavy with underclassmen, which would potentially be good, but their past couple cohorts of kids have bad trouble cracking that top top tier. Obviously, Sasso is a G, but he came in at that level seemingly. Development trajectory for Ohio State athletes hasn’t been groundbreaking in recent years. Being in a back and forth with Rutgers doesn’t put you at the top of the heap. They can certainly be in the running for a team trophy of some sort maybe, but, in spite of a recent dual victory against Michigan, which I think will be their peak performance for the year, I put all of the following teams ahead of them rather comfortably: In no particular order, NC State, Cornell, Okie State, Nebraska, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Penn State.

I regularly bag on the brands for some of their decision making and the way they run the program, but I think this is some elephant-sized hyperbole. We are witnessing a time where one program simply cannot be competed against, because they have something very special going on, and everyone else is competing for second place. I would say, if anything, the brands, probably Terry especially, have a penchant for wanting to help the kid who is down on his luck and/or incapable of totally controlling himself. I will go so far as to say they saved austin desanto many years in jail with the work they put in with him. I also would not chalk the ferrari saga up to blind desire to compete. I think they wanted to mentor/father in a way to make the world better, and it was tough to admit defeat. There are a handful of big letter programs in the country that have real legacies of producing consistent AA’s for more than a decade. They are Iowa, Penn State, Okie State, Ohio State, Nebraska, and Cornell. Of these programs, only two have transitioned from their founding figurehead coach. Yes I know Ohio State was good before Tom Ryan, but his arrival was a total regime change, not a continuation of the same tree. I want to include Minnesota here, but they are clearly not at the same level as when Robinson was the coach. The only other team to transition seemingly well from a head coach leaving has been Cornell, which leads me to believe that Mike Grey was just running the program behind the scenes anyway. As far as running a blockbuster program, which is under the biggest microscope in the sport, I’d say the brands are doing a pretty good job. They regularly turn average guys into AA contenders, and they do the spirit and the legacy of the program justice every year, even when it seems like they might stumble. Most importantly, it really seems like they graduate good young men, and legitimately develop character, probably as well as any other head coach.

Yeah, but the professorships aren't what bring in the money and allow them to maintain their OG status in the big ten television contracts...

Has Iowa ever been shutout at Carver?

I don't believe this will happen, but I give it a solid 35% chance, PSU has a history of underperforming in Carver, and the overtraining bug is definitely going around (ahem Missouri, Michigan, Iowa). While PSU looked ok against Ohio State, traveling plus a continued overtraining bite could certainly pull this match much closer than people expect. I don't realistically think it will go down that way, but I remember Mark Hall's Freshman year, that was exactly how that dual went down. Then PSU blew the doors off of NCAA's, but at least for this match, I think it has a 35% chance of being sneaky close.

This is a very smart comment, and I agree both coaches, and all top coaches have moved beyond the concept that dual meet performance is anything other than tertiary window dressing. Yeah, it's nice to win at home, but the whole schedule, as well as the way coaches structurally and competitively manage their seasons, is so overweighted for March, that I wouldn't be surprised to see this outcome either. As part of the structural thing, I think its important to note that being a college wrestling coach seems to be a much more year-round position than it was in it was ten years ago. A lot more press and hype is given to getting college age guys to medal at age-group worlds or to make senior teams than it used to be. Overall I think this is a great thing, but I believe the best coaches now budget their wrestlers' mileage on a 12 month basis rather than a 4-month basis.

Not unless Askren can mind-hack the team for his coach. I have a sneaking suspicion he’s a behind the scenes cornerstone to the long term success of that program.

If I only saw this one, I’d agree 100%, and I do think Missouri was straight flat soda today, but something good has happened to the okie state attitude this season, I think it is entirely due to coleman scott. Him showing up has somehow changed the chemistry in that room. Olejnik has been jiving with coleman’s techniques, and has had crazy swagger all year, and it's rubbed off on Plott and is starting to show on the other guys. They are starting to have expectations for themselves in a good way. The way they wrestle kinda reminds me of old iowa teams in a way.

They looked about as good as I can remember seeing an Okie State team look in a long time. Around this time of year from most years I can remember, they would typically be wrapped in miles of athletic tape, and would just be muscling through to some token 7th/8th matches for most of the best guys, with a Fix high AA here or there. That is not what they looked like today. If they keep it together like they showed up today, they can pose some real problems for a lot of people.