NCAA Wrestling Thread - Day 1
Obviously we've got March Madness going on, but the NCAAs for wrestling have begun as well. I'm not super informed on wrestling, but my roommate from undergrad took me to some matches and I'll pay attention to the B1G season each year and the NCAAs.
Michigan Wrestlers and Seeds:
125 - 16 Drew Mattin defeats 17 Schroder (Purdue) 5-3
133 - 2 Steven Micic defeats 31 Pengilly (Stanford) 15-7
141 - 8 Kanen Storr defeats 25 Finesilver (Duke) 10-7
149 - 33 Malik Amine vs 1 Ashnault (Rutgers)
157 - 4 Alec Pantaleo vs 29 Smythe (Buffalo)
165 - 6 Logan Mass vs 27 Keller (Buffalo)
174 - 4 Myles Amine vs 29 Grello (Rutgers)
184 - none
197 - none
285 - 5 Mason Parris vs 28 Stoll (Iowa)
If the bracket goes chalk, we'll have 6 All Americans, with 1 NCAA Finalist and two Semifinalists.
If you want to watch, it's on ESPNU or the Watch ESPN app. 125 and 133 are done with their first rounds, 141s happening right now.
Ashnaut defeats Amine 9-2. Not an unexpected result. Better than the match at Rutgers, where Amine got majored 16-4
If Micic's knee is healthy, he is the best wrestler in the country in his weight class. He would have been the #1 seed had he not bowed out of the Big Ten Championships. He should win the title, he is that good.
Myles Amine has a chance to win the title as well. While he has never beaten Mark Hall or Valencia (ASU) all of his losses to them are by 1 point, so its not like he is dominated. 1 move here or there, and he could beat either of them. He has a very good chance to make the finals.
Pantaleo is an interesting case. He is absolutely a Top 5 wrestler at his class, however, I don't know if it is the post Mono cardio, but he gasses badly in the 3rd period too often, and has given up some large leads and lost. If he can pace himself, he is due for some big wins.
Massa just needs to avoid Joseph from Penn State. He is just his kryptonite; just the one guy I don't think Logan can beat.
Parris will be interesting as he was expected to red-shirt this year to bulk up. He is the anomaly of our team. He could easily get to the podium, but like Coon did his freshman year, he could also fall out of All American status as well.
This is one of our best teams in a long time.. I am a huge wrestling fan and actually attempted to walk on to the team back in 2000, lasted a few weeks before calling it quits (wrestling is the hardest sport)
That’s interesting, I almost walked on to the team in 2000. I coached high school wrestling right out of high school and almost went back to wrestling at Michigan in 2000, the year after. Decided, ultimately, that I loved doing the sport but didn’t want to dedicate the consuming amount it took to make it at the next level. So coaching and wrestling in the room was a good fit for a few years. Good for you for going for it!
I was attending NCAA wrestling nationals with tickets through a national champion winner and his brother who was a runner-up, incidentally, when I made the decision. Great times.
Good post - the Wrestling tournament is a great event and a ton of fun to follow.
Micic is my pick to win the Title at 133. I am greatly looking forward to Micic absolutely mauling DeSanto in the quarterfinals. That is if RBY doesn't beat DeSanto first, of course (I'm rooting for that as a PSU fan, but I think DeSanto wins that one).
Love me some Delta wrestling donning the block M. The Mattins will keep Michigan stocked at a class or two for a decade.
March 21st, 2019 at 10:21 PM ^
I want to first say I enjoy watching Mattin, and I know this is an unpopular opinion, but it would be best if Mattin was usurped after his junior year. Mattin is a solid piece of the line up, but is still a tier lower than All-American status, while soon-to-be freshmen Kurt McHenry is a two time Cadet world champion and has a much higher ceiling. Kurt needs to add quite a bit of weight (around 15-20lbs) but has enrolled early, which is a bit unique in Wrestling, to take advantage of the weight program. Mattin will be our 125 in 2019-2020, but in a perfect world McHenry takes over after that. Cole Matin (also an incoming freshmen) is a head scratching addition other than family ties and Zack (Youngest brother who won a state title in Ohio’s small school division) has a lot of potential but at this point in time there are several better options for Michigan.
Great Family, but it’s a bit lofty to say they will be stocking Michigan’s weight classes for a decade
That was the biggest horseshit officiating I have seen in 3 years. A fucking travesty. There is no way the Stoll/Parris Match necessitated 7 stalling calls combined, not to mention the not even stopping the first period when time ran out, forcing both guys to wrestling a good 20 additional seconds (which at HW that is a big deal). Fucking disaster, that ref should never ref another match at these championships. Embarrassment to the sport.
The team underperformed in the BTT. Hopefully they do better this weekend. Micic is the only one with a realistic chance of winning a championship. Obviously not having his points in the BTT was a major factor.
Agree with this assessment. I still don't like the back out stalling call. At times, that's the only thing you can do. This is not freestyle. If so, the russian arm bar move is a good technique to get a step out point. In folkstyle its just bad, as Stoll just pushed him out. If anything, I think Stoll should have been hit more for the push out rather than a flee. Mason was doing the only thing he could being outweighed.
Still, I think Michigan ruined this year for Parrish. They got excited at his tournaments wins and bumped him up to try and get a team award again. Well with 184 and 197 not getting in and winning a few matches, I don't see a team trophy. And Mason is absolutely undersized. He is not built like a brick shit house like Synder was at 240. He needed that year to put on another 10 pounds of muscle. I don't see him placing. He'll run into Conan again or another bug guy who'll just lay on him and he won't be able to get out. Hope I'm wrong but I doubt it.
It was a point of emphasis at the high school level, but they put in the caveat that if they were making a wrestling move it wasn't stalling. My feed lagged out for most of the first period but when I saw the stall calls, that's ridiculous. That being said, he was backing right out about half of the time because all Stoll did was run him straight out. That was all a judgment call that probably shouldn't have been called nearly as much as it was.
That being said, getting a returning placer in the first round that got seeded that low is just a bad draw for him after the kid from Purdue withdrew and they moved his seed up. I get that he was 9-5 and had a couple bad losses coming off his shooting himself in the knee in the offseason, but the 28 seed as a returning placer is really just baffling.
Agree with this take on Mason. He's a top 3 national wrestler... In a fictional 220 lbs weight class. But since he has to go heavyweight he's losing to guys like Stoll and Jennings this year who basically just push him around and lay on him. If Mason is going to be a successful heavyweight he needs to learn better match management. He likes to shoot the low ankle shot early in matches and it usually works. Then guys adjust to it after he starts gassing and he loses half a step. He consistently gets sprawled underneath guys that are 20-40 lbs heavier than him. With Stoll today, I thought he should have circled more and avoided the hand fighting and arm bar game with a guy 40 lbs heavier than him. Oh well, hope to see him wrestle back to AA status and hopefully put on 20 lbs this off-season (though he seems a bit lean to pull that off).
7-2 in session one. With Malik Amine losing to #1 in his second match and Parris getting beat by Stoll.
Session 2 expect Mattin to fall to #1 Sebastian Rivera. But the rest are favored to win. And Mason has to start the long track back to make AA. I read on Flo a person say he loved Mason's draw if he got beat by Stoll. Thinks he could make it to 5th. Lets hope!
7th place as a team with 10 points. Micic, Pantaleo, and Massa all had majors.
Well scratch Massa on that after just a really piss poor performance against the 11 seed from NIU. Just a terrible strategy in the final period and no chain wrestling what-so-ever. Single move everytime on the escape, if he had thrown some chain moves, exploded more, he could have escaped and at least gone to OT. Just a disappointing performance.
We have had an issue all year, minus Micic and Myles Amine, with finishing in the 3rd period. Either our conditioning is just bad or we are employing a football like strategy of just trying to run out the clock with a lead...We have got to improve in the 3rd if we are ever going to challenge for Team Titles...