dragit

Both those paragraphs are right on point. Plus he got ridden out, never a good sign for NCAAs. He's a notable talent. Maybe in a different weight class he could have a realistic chance, but not here, not this year. And something else that I don't think has been pointed out -- how much sense does it make to spend a year of eligibility of a guy with his ceiling to throw him into the fire of Big Tens and NCAAs with only five matches of college experience. Would be a disservice to the wrestler. They knew how good he was the whole year, I can't imagine they ever thought Arnold was better at that weight. Therefore I doubt they ever considered having him go in March; if that was a serious possibility, he should have wrestled more college matches to get ready. For no other reason than to get more experience on bottom in match situations.

The whole thing is silly. It's based on the breakthrough performances of two guys who can't finish higher than third and the best guess would be something like 3rd or 4th and 6th or 7th. Maybe Jimmy is actually Cael himself, and posting here is his outlet, underneath all that controlled dullness is a standup comic bursting to get out.

Can't dispute what SOME might think but MOST seem appropriately thrilled, as evidenced by the uniform standing ovations, the endless autograph lines, and the oohs and ahhs every throughout the two minutes or so of all his matches.

What they are doing with Ferrari makes good sense. He is a legit potential 4x champ who has very little chance of winning in that weight class this year (not a knock on him at all, that was some impressive match today and some notably gracious behavior afterwards). And this way they won what to that program is a very important dual and saved Arnold from a gratuitous loss. The only thing that from the outside doesn't make sense to me is Arnold at 184, where he by the eye test (a) looks too small to have a decent chance at high AA; and (b) would score more, perhaps much more than Kennedy at 174, and you could put Brands at 184. I guess that you could say they didn't know if Brands would be able to wrestle with his injury, but Arnold seems like he's not getting the good end of the deal here wrestling at that weight.

Now THAT one can't happen again thanks to the NCAA. Haselrig was another football player found to have CTE after dying young.

If he beats Keck for number 5 he belongs on College Mt. Rushmore for sure. That doesn't mean he should get a Hodge, different issue. The Ferrari performance is exhibit number one for why he shouldn't. But it's not evidence in any way that he is vulnerable or that Ferrari could beat him once if they wrestled ten times.

Steveson should and will win unless Keck beats Starocci. Mesenbrink can win next year when he wins all 30 matches by 20-5 in a total of 100 minutes.

I've been thinking a little about this since the Feldman match. Specifically at the 10:18 mark. I think it comes down to your half empty/half full take on what happened there. Feldman made a great shot and got in quite deep. So does that represent a glimmer of hope that an athletic heavy might be able to get a takedown against Steveson? Or does the fact that Steveson INSTANTLY, IMMEDIATELY broke out of it mean he is so f'ing good that even the very best move of a good opponent (at a time when Steveson's guard was down at the end of a match) is like child's play to him? I think it's probably the latter and agree that muscle man Hendrickson taking top and Gable taking bottom and Hendrickson with two chances somehow turning him is probably the only realistic chance, and it's somewhere in that 1/10,000 range mentioned above.

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.