I missed most of the wrestling that went on over the weekend as I was visiting some friends and did not have access to watch all of the duals but I did get home to watch the absolute boat race that was Iowa State vs. Mizzou on Sunday afternoon. The Cyclones lost 31 to 7 to the Tigers but honestly, I don’t feel that bad about this one. Yes, on paper we probably had the upper hand according to most, if not all rankings. Yes, Ian Parker, one of our best wrestlers, got upset by a kid he probably will finish ahead of in March (my biased prediction). But as an avid fan of Iowa State wrestling since 2011ish this was an a** whooping that I did not mind and here are a few reasons why.
- No Alex Mackall, No Jarrett Degen, No Sam Colbray, No Marcus Coleman.
- Four of our nine returning starters from last year who are all ranked wrestlers did not wrestle in the dual against Missouri. I’m not sure if Mackall and Coleman lost their starting spots this week to Kysen Terukina and Yonger Bastida since they did wrestle in extra matches, but either way not having four starters with experience wrestling in a dual like this is going to affect the team score.
- Hello True Freshman
- We knew going into the year with the new Covid rule about eligibility not counting, that we would see some interesting line ups. Kysen Terukina, Zach Redding, and Cam Robinson were all true freshmen in the starting line up this past Sunday. Although they all lost, my stock for them went up after they all were in very competitive matches against ranked opponents. Terukina and Redding lost by a point in both very similar matches that came down to the final minutes. Robinson lost to highly respected yet highly frustrating Brock Mauller. I love Cam Robinson’s attack rate, and I am excited about him for the next 4-5 years.
- Score Points
- I have been to a lot of Cyclone duals in the past where we lost matches because we were just hanging in there for a tight win or our guys did not have the gas tank for a seven minute match. Sunday was not the case. In several of the matches our guys wrestled to score points, and not to win or lose. I would rather watch a guy attack for seven minutes and lose than them staying on the defensive and losing a tight match. We got outwrestled in a lot of positions, but that did not stop a lot of the guys from attacking. Most of the Cyclones looked in good conditional shape with the exceptions of a few.
- Bastida
- Finally, Dresser and Co. received some flack for the Bastida match where he chose bottom instead of neutral in the third period. Bastida ended up getting rode out and looked pretty gassed at the end of the match. Had they chosen neutral, Bastida might have won the match since he seems to have no problem getting takedowns compared to scoring points on the mat. However, I don’t hate the call. At some point or another he’s going to have to learn to get out from underneath so why not learn how in January as opposed to March. I’m predicting that Marcus Coleman will have the spot in March anyways so this is an excellent opportunity for Bastida to learn from.
- David Carr and Gannon Gremmel are living up to expectations
- Small sample size yes, but Carr and Gremmel are looking real good to make the podium in March. Both these guys had respectable wins over ranked opponents and both looked real good doing it. Roll Clones.
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