3 NCAA Wrestlers That Are Sure To Make Splash At A Senior Level

3 NCAA Wrestlers That Are Sure To Make Splash At A Senior Level

With the NCAA tournament being the culmination of the folkstyle season and major international style tournaments just around the corner, we got to thinking, which current NCAA athletes are poised to make the jump to the next level? Before we name who we t

Mar 9, 2017 by Michael Malinconico
3 NCAA Wrestlers That Are Sure To Make Splash At A Senior Level
NCAA Brackets Here

With the NCAA tournament being the culmination of the folkstyle season and major international style tournaments just around the corner, we got to thinking, which current NCAA athletes are poised to make the jump to the next level? Before we name who we think are the guys that are best suited for senior level competition I thought Id give you some insight into some (not all) of the criteria that we used to determine our picks.  

Weight​
Unfortunately, whether or not you are around an olympic weight will play a factor. 

Position
Unlike the NCAA, when someone on the senior circuit gets to your legs they're almost certainly going to score. In fact there are significantly more ways to score, they can lift you and put you on your back for 4 or 5. They can finish clean and conventional for 2, and if things start going bad they can drive you out of bounds for 1. 

Scramble-ability
With non-controlled exposure scrambling takes on a different meaning then it does in the NCAA. At the senior level you have to be able to scramble WITH OUT rolling across your back. That's not the only caveat, everyone knows that in a scramble "high hips win", but if you get into a scramble in a freestyle bout it would behove you to stay on your knee, if you make your way up to your feet and go out of bounds, thats a point. 

Experience
Learning how to wrestle freestyle in your down time is not always the worst thing (ask J'Den Cox), but conventional wisdom would tell us that having some international styles experience is better than not. 

Intangible
Some athletes love to wrestle, and there are some that just love to win and happen to be great at wrestling. These are the ones that learn how to win matches at any cost. When you find a combination of the two then you get a something very rare. 

The Players

Bo Nickal
Four Pointers are extremely valuable in freestyle and Bo Nickal can put anyone on their head. Thats said, he may go to his back in the process, but in the current climate of freestyle wrestling where offense is rewarded giving up one or two points on a reversal after getting four on a big throw and gaining a criteria advantage isn't a bad trade off. Take the big moves out of the equation and Bo is still pretty well equipped to compete at the next level, he wrestled for a bronze medal in the 2013 Cadet World Championships. Penn State makes far ankle scrambles a daily drill, so he's more than adept at coming out on top of a scramble with out putting himself in danger. 

Thomas Gilman
57kg has been a bit of a revolving door in the US for a while now. Tony Ramos has held the spot for 2 years in 2014 and 15, after losing in the Olympic Team Trials to Daniel Dennis in 16. Gilman doesn't look like he cuts a tremendous amount of weight, so making and maintaining 57kg at 18 hours recovery shouldn't be a problem. Gilman has the right attitude to progress and assuming he wins this weekend in St Louis he'll be riding a pretty nice winning streak going into freestyle season. Plus, who doesn't want to see Gilman talking junk to senior level guys? 

Gabe Dean
Mr Dean, as I like to call him, (mostly because I'm petrified of him) is pretty much the total package. It would not surprise at all to see him on either of the men's senior teams. Lest we forget that Dean's last international competition was in the 2015 Pan Ams where he wrestled Greco. He did, however, take home a Junior World bronze in freestyle in 2014. Which ever style he decides to go he'll be very successful. He's incredibly strong, so hand fighting at the next level would be no problem. The 86kg weight class is only w 5 lbs up from his college weight. The thing that makes me so excited to watch Gabe Dean at the next level is that his technique is top notch. He has an low risk/high reward style that I think will frustrate even senior level guys around the world. The only question mark is his ability to scramble out of leg attacks because not many people get to his legs anymore. (One other question mark might be whether he's going to sacrifice more of his young adulthood to being a wrestling lifer after graduation with an Ivy education).