dragit

It's a good indication that Ferrari is very good and a real potential future champ, I don't think any of us aren't impressed. Some of us just don't think it says much about him being a threat to beat Starocci, who has a track record of wrestling carefully and tactically at times based on his read of the big picture. Enjoyable to watch? No. But that's what Mesenbrink is for.

These guys are only human. Finishing off history is really hard. We've seen it with Dan Gable and Spencer Lee. Mahomes looked like he was drunk going for his three peat in the Super Bowl. In tennis a few years back Djokovic played the worst match of his career when a win would have meant the Grand Slam. Serena Williams same thing, lost to a nobody. I think because he's so careful Starocci is better situated than most for this, but that pressure will be a wild card.

100% agree re Ferrari and the tiers but there is a basis for worry in that probably the third or fourth best PFP guy is in his weight class, and there will be a ton of pressure on the favorite going for 5. If not for Keck it would be worry free.

And certainly don't penalize the bottom guy!! Officiating wrestling is really hard, there are a lot of very tricky ambiguous positions, usually around control. But this isn't ambiguous, a parallel ride is easy to spot, and it's pretty obvious when the bottom man has no ability or means to build up to a base.

This is a good distinction and I agree the Ramos thing wasn't as bad for a few reasons, including no bad intent -- I believe it was driven by exuberance and joy and not really directed at his opponent. I'm fact I'm a big Ramos fan, just wish he had blown kisses to the crowd instead. But to me the point is that the opponent didn't "let him," he was overmatched and couldn't stop him, and didn't deserve to be humiliated because he's not a great wrestler.

I just don't see how Strickenberger or Ramos are OK, unacceptably disrespectful to the opponent. It's a sport where one guy establishes physical dominance over the other and then has his hand raised while the other has to stand there with their hand down, which is how you know you were the better man. Rubbing their nose in it is bad form for many reasons, including that, if it is done enough, it will lead to actual fights. Shouldn't the basic test be whether you'd be upset/humiliated/enraged if someone did it to you? Wouldn't you feel that way if either of those celebrations happened to you? I've got no problem with shaking a fist or flexing toward the crowd, but things like this that are directly at the opponent aren't cool.

On the whole I thought Ruth was not engaging and you have to defer to the ref on the mat. To nit-pick, though, I thought that two of the calls were arguably harsh. One was on the bottom, this is one I've seen a lot recently, the bottom man is flat, top has a lot of pressure on with a leg basically tied up and is parallel, not really sure what the bottom guy can do in that parallel position. The other was the second to last stalling, Ruth escaped very near the edge and then wasn't able to circle back to the middle. Not going to cry a river for Ruth, though, he wasn't really wrestling.

DQ'ing a Big Ten champ is pretty impressive, let's give him 5 TFs for it, and with Mesenbrink stymied today, that leaves Starocci only 2 TFs behind.

What a show. Was so great seeing him in person in Evanston last month. I really hope he sticks around and goes freestyle.

Then my hope is that in the NCAA final, after he does nothing for six and a half minutes and they are tied 1-1, his shoelace comes untied, he loses a point, then desperately attacks for 30 seconds, and when he ends up prostrate on the mat, Keckheisen stands over and does that to him, and he sends out a nice tweet about the awesome celly.

She is not a scholarship athlete.

Thanks for posting these. Seems like this is basically Terry gotta Terry, and although Terry Terrying is a pretty big topic (that's why Flo had such a hard job editing down their Terry movie to just a couple of hours), in this case with respect to these clips, I was far more impressed by who I assume was Moriah Marinelli, or to be more precise, Air Moriah, jumping to the ceiling during the pinning combination.

They look totally demoralized out there tonight.

Definitely losing his touch. Did you see that match last Friday?

Interesting, thanks for posting. Should be a really good dual. 141 could decide it?

Sadly, the Illini have now lost the element of surprise due to this bulletin board material of a post and can probably only win 16-15.

Quite possible, but I have no idea. Very reasonable on the other hand to infer that Brands directed this, I seem to recall Ferrari saying something to the effect of, Whether and when I wrestle is up to Tom Brands. But the main point is that neither the coach or the wrestler has said anything (to my knowledge). This is the number two ranked team in a division one sport, with a coach that is one of the highest paid public employees in the state, that apparently deploys seven figures of NIL money a year, and that competes in front of 15,000 people a match, and it is routine that obvious questions come up to which fans want answers but are never asked or answered. Thus we offer basic speculation because we, absent any further edification from the team, see this decision: No known benefit to the team. Marginal at best benefit to the athlete. Conceivably what the athlete prefers now, but very well might not be in a year or two if he wants to transfer. You know, because he's very young, may not see the big picture as well as a 21 year old, and because when he's 21 his coach might (will!) recruit over him if the coach has the option, and then the wrestler might feel a little different about things.

Correct, that was in my list of problems with this move that we can only speculate about.

Seems like just more of the same. Decision which to many serious fans' naked eye doesn't make sense. Giving up a year of eligibility for one match which has zero meaning to the team and seemingly minor meaning to the athlete. No explanation given (as far as I am aware). Thus speculation ensues. And there's been plenty on the Iowa board. Including blanket assertions of new NCAA rules which no one has reason to be confident in. Another challenging vacuum-filling explanation: He's not that good, so we don't mind burning a year of his eligibility. Nice, so we're presuming he may not be a long-term starter at Iowa, and if he changes his mind about whether he's good with that and hits the portal, he does so without that year of eligibility. But there I am speculating. Because, as usual, there is no plainly stated linear explanation for what happened. There is no rule that says the coach has to explain anything to the lowly fans. And sometimes there is a genuine competitive reason not to explain (kid has a specific injury and we don't want upcoming opponents to know). But that's not the case here, is it? Just like there wasn't a genuine competitive reason not to just say, Marinelli tore something in his ribs, he has to MFF out (because he's MFFing out of NCAAs, his season is over, so it doesn't matter if you say he's injured); instead, let's give a lot of roundabout rhetoric about his character and leave it for people to infer that he's a head case or having severe personal problems. Just like there is no rule the coach has to explain, there's no rule that fans on message boards can't say, geez, we don't see a logical reason here and speculate that maybe they can't count to five or that they aren't good decision makers. I generally like both the head coach and the associate head coach and even enjoy their quirks. But some of those quirks can be maddening and seem like self-inflicted wounds. If they were Cael, they could get away with it a lot easier. It's like Crash Davis says in Bull Durham, if you're winning you can have fungus on your shower shoes and it makes you colorful; but if you're not, then you're just a slob. Cael can give non-answers all he wants and get away with it; TnT, not so much.

Tainted and long gone I would think. He's the ultimate winner but not a Hodge guy. For starters he can't out-Hodge Steveson or Mesenbrink unless they lose.

While I agree with everything in here, based on Starocci's results in his career against terrific elite opponents, through Keckheisen (it happened regardless of whether official), I don't see a rematch with Ferrari making any difference. (Does anyone think Ferrari is better than Keckheisen right now?)

I think you nailed it. The bother seems to be directly related to his low L4P (likeability for pound) rating.

Alrhough to be precise if that happens he will be the ONLY 4xer to lose his final collegiate match.

That would be awesome. You and I will be rooting for the same outcome.

I agree, it's a bummer. If I had that talent I'd want to ring the bell. And as a fan I dont enjoy his matches at all. But he has a different approach which seems to have worked reasonably well in a very strong weight class by being able to know he can't be taken down and can't be beaten on the mat.