wrestle87

Didn't they also say that there was record attendance here today? Whooooops....

Mauller is contemplating a legal name change to Maullee

Lol, as in, after he took one at around the minute mark, there was nothing to count?

Don't jinx it!

Are mizzou guys just ranked too high? Like, wtf is going on? Mizzou looks like they're drinking the same thing Iowa hydrated with against Michigan

Mizzou looks really not good. And this ref apparently doesn't believe in back points.

He was definitely pinned more than truax.

You beat me to it

If I could award comment of the month or something like that, I would give the award to you for this.

Lewan has that match format down to an art. Nobody wrestles him to a big match, but, like we just saw happen, lots of other wrestlers have trouble handling the extra time portion. Lewan also must be strong as an ox to be able to shut down just about everyone he wrestles.

Franek got out-Franek’d

Truax doesn't have the engine to get past keckeisen I don't think, and he maybe has a 20% chance against Plott.

Brooks is so big, I'd venture to say that David Taylor is in for a run this cycle. Brooks is going to be really strong coming off this season spending the whole time up at 197.

That did not look like a pin on the replay...

The following are not rhetorical snarky questions, I mean to ask them earnestly. Do schools with wrestling programs that are not in these two conferences really benefit financially from their athletics programs? I do see what you're talking about, but for example, SDSU or little rock, are their athletic departments meaningful contributors to their financial budget every year?

This, in my opinion, would be stellar. The NCAA is the college sports version of the old hollywood movie production houses. Great thing, great for sports, great for competition, great for the kids.

I just watched the Vito documentary on Flo, it was very well done. Their documentaries are always stellar. Watching Yianni in the hallway after losing to Nick Lee, brought back all kinds of memories. For those who wrestled, how do you relate to the seasons that ended shy of what you wanted? Do they still sit somewhere in your soul? How do you relate to them, and how have you used those experiences to in your adult life? I feel like this is an aspect of being a wrestler that gets very little airtime or discussion, but is potentially the largest part of the sport.

All extremely correct. I did not know that Mesenbrink transferred in, and had completely forgotten about Nagao and Kirk.

True, but I don’t think there’s another room in the world that can do what the Iowa room does in terms of turning transfers into Iowa guys. It’s also self-selecting. When guys go to Iowa, the all slowly turn into larger versions of Tom and Terry, you can watch and hear it in the way they talk. When a wrestler chooses Iowa, they also know what they are signing up for. It’s not going to be fun, and that is what those guys want. Everyone is there for the ride and the experience to be able say for the rest of their life “yeah, I did that.” Michigan has a great room and Bormet is a good coach, but he doesn’t have the personality and charisma to wipe the proverbial slate clean for whoever shows up.

I'd agree, maybe even a bit higher, but considering that a full 50% of their lineup is mercenaries this year, that's a pretty low rate of return considering the goodwill that also burns with your team. Michigan is good and is fun when they are good. Watching them wrestle this year they really have the personality of a frankenstein team, I just don't see the cohesion with them that they've had in years past when all their guys were lifers who grew within the program. I think this is the main that NIL and the transfer portal pose to teams, too many transplants mess up team chemistry, which hinders development in the younger guys.

They're only useful to Michigan if they bring in AA's this year. Kyle Conel was a great wrestler for Kent State that one year......remind me again how that went at Penn State?

Michigan is not looking good this year. 1/2 the lineup is imports who have one year left, and they really don’t have the time in the room to blend with the team in the same way. That, and after 6 years in a college room, most of them are are worn out with plywood joints bead together by duct tape. It’s just what that much wrestling does to a body. Austin Gomez is fun to watch, but he has never had a clean style that works well in tournaments, he just falls on his own lat drop sword too often. And the other guys are performing with intense mediocrity. Amine is very likely hurt, I’d say maybe even done for the year given how he got wiped by mesenbrink and all of a sudden mantanona appears. Griffith puts together 3-2 matches, and davison, as much as I want him to do well, looks less fired up this year. Something happens with the grad transfer for money route. It is not as successful as we would all imagine.

Yeah, however it went down, it's a school that expects its athletes to toe a certain line and to blend in with the non-sport playing crowd as much as possible. Rather than elevating their status on campus, it sounds more like they behave like the non-Cornell Ivies, putting an asterisk on their athletes' files, requiring that they be on their best behavior or else, bc they aren't the 100% library crew.

Northwestern is not Sacred Heart. Northwestern has an endowment of $15 billion. Sacred Heart's is a few hundred million. The math, and institutional priorities, are veeery different. Athletics is not a tier 1A priority for the school. More like a tier 1C priority. Reputation management is 1A, Academic and research dollars are 1B.

It's not just that they are low on scholarships, they are notoriously stingy on strategies that other schools use to boost/continue enrollment for athletic purposes. Northwestern still holds tight to the "we are a school first, you are a student first" approach to college athletics, which 99% of other institutions either never operated by or have long since done away with. All of their good guys had eligibility left, but they couldn't find a way to make it work for staying enrolled in some way at the school. The NW team has never had THAT much pull with the school. Anytime you hear coaches go with the "compete and get a great education" line, that is code for "I don't really have that much pull with administration, so we get who we can, but don't expect the world from us." Michigan, conversely, is very good at finding ways to be flexible, despite their similar assertions of academic excellence, is at least willing to make room for fluff degrees so athletes can be athletes.