The Best Weekend in Sports
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March 28, 2008
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| FloWrestling.org Picture By www.tech-fall.com Everybody always says that the NCAA Tournament is the culmination of the wrestling season. In a way, they’re right. But really, the NCAA Tournament IS the wrestling season. Essentially you need to find a way to punch a ticket, and whatever you do over the course of three days is going to determine how your year went. Because the stakes are so high, few weekends in any sport carry as much drama. You’re always a second away from glory or a second away from disaster. There are too many heroes to count, to many turning points to notice, too many warriors to recognize, and just too much good wrestling for me to feel like anything I write here can sufficiently sum up the weekend. But I’m going to take it a paragraph at a time and give it a shot. More than anything, the NCAA Tournament is about guts. If I had to pick out one snapshot from the entire weekend, it would have to be Dustin Fox, blood dripping from his face, nose mangled as all hell, with his arms triumphantly up in the air and a 1,000 kilowatt smile. It’s no secret that I’ve been rooting for Bergman all year, but Fox absolutely gutted this one out and found a way to get his hand raised. And hopefully somebody has a good shot of him right after he won, that’s what wrestling is all about. While we’re talking guts, J Jaggers provided us with the quote of the tournament. After a grisly scene in his finals match where he tore multiple ligaments in his ankles, Jaggers responded to the ESPN interviewer by saying “My ankle will heal eventually, but losing never would.†All night the ESPN announcers talked about how these are the toughest athletes in college sports and the pride of blue collar America, and J Jaggers backed them up. Incredible effort from one of my new favorite wrestlers. I’d like to thank all of the wrestlers that made me look like I know what I’m talking about. My mid season predictions worked out much better than I thought they would (although there were some clunkers, which I’ll get to in a second). I’d like to give special thanks to four guys for making me look much smarter than I am. I had a hunch that “J Jaggers is talented enough to make a finals runâ€, turns out he won the whole thing. I used my incredible Pennsylvania bias to pick Matt Kyler as my sleeper at 141 all year. He wrestled a fantastic tournament and was one of only a handful of unseeded wrestlers to place. He’s only going to accomplish bigger things. Hudson Taylor gets nowhere near the hype he deserves, but has helped put Maryland wrestling back on the map. No match is ever over when he’s wrestling, which is an attitude that could win him a national title. His matches with Josh Glenn and Craig Brester were incredible. The last one deserves its own paragraph. Turns out having Jordan Leen as a sleeper at 157 was a good idea. He gets my vote for Most Outstanding wrestler of the tournament. Talk about turning it on when it counts. Leen didn’t even win EIWAs last week, and now for the rest of his life he’ll be known as a National Champion. Although he had an illustrious prep career, Leen was almost an afterthought in a recruiting class that included Josh Arnone, Adam Frey, and the almighty Troy Nickerson. Three years later, Leen has one more National Title than all three combined. If everybody is healthy next season, Cornell could be scary good. To be fair, I also made plenty of picks that didn’t work out. In hindsight, referring to Mike Poeta as the Secretariat of the 157 pound weight class probably was over hyping him just a tad. As somebody who knows a hell of a lot more about wrestling than I do pointed out too me, he’s explosive as hell, but if you’re good enough to stop his first move, he’s not going to score. Taking Kenny Jordan and Chris Oliver as sleepers wasn’t exactly a good move. Actually, that wasn’t a good move at all, as Oliver needed to make the tournament before he made the waves that I expected him to.. Jake Strayer didn’t exactly make a “serious runâ€. Mike Letts would have been a nightmare quarterfinal match up for anybody…had he made quarterfinals. Jake Varner was not as untouchable as I thought, a season of 2-1 scores should have warned me. And Patrick Bond wasn’t exactly the sleeper I was hoping he would be at 197. Never in my life have I been so confident that somebody would win a match after being taken down twice in the first period. After Brent Metcalf’s second escape, all I could say was buckle up, because the pedal is about to be pressed to the floor. Sure enough, he wrestled the rest of the match like his singlet was on fire, destroying Bubba Jenkins in the process. The more I see him wrestler, the less human I think he is. Then all doubt goes out the window when I hear him speak. Tom Brands has completely brainwashed this poor kid into a killing machine. He wasn’t even remotely excited after winning his first National Title, just focused on the next time he’s going to wrestle. It takes a different mindset to succeed in this sport, and Metcalf has perfected it. The kids I feel the worst for are the wrestlers who have come so close to climbing the mountain the year before, then not getting a shot to redeem themselves. Josh Churella, Ryan Lang, and Craig Henning all deserved another shot at a title. I especially wanted to see Lang go out and win one after last year’s debacle. We all saw how happy Coleman Scott and Keith Gavin were after shaking their finals loss, it’s a shame that the other three will never get the shot to shake that weight. But it certainly is a part of sport. All three had fabulous careers, and have nothing to hang their head about. Look for Dustin Schlatter to come back loaded for bear. A week ago he was 10 seconds from beating Metcalf. Now he has an entire off-season to think about the disaster that was NCAAs. Personally, I’d love to be good enough where it was a disaster to finish 7th in the deepest weight class in recent memory, but Schlatter certainly is on that level. He takes needless crap from “fansâ€, and I would love to see him shut everybody up. By all accounts he’s a classy kid, he certainly is a phenomenal wrestler, and here’s hoping that next season he comes out like a man on fire and reminds everybody about the best true freshman we’ve ever seen. Show of the night goes to Coleman Scott. Single, cradle, celebrate. He looked like a five ton weight was lifted off his shoulders. I always wonder what that exact moment is like, when you’ve reached the pinnacle of your sport, and that instant you’ve dreamed of since you were a little kid finally comes true. I love celebrations because it gives us a glimpse into just how great that feeling is. Watch Scott celebrate, I couldn’t fend off an ear to ear grin. It’s one of the best parts about sports, the pure, unbridled joy of victory. Here’s to another great college wrestling season. |
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Thanks for the compliment. I suppose it is up to people like us to make sure that wrestlers and their fans stop perpetuating the stereotype that we in the wrestling community are a bunch of uneducated dimwits (too bad Metcalf and Brands are such robots).
"A week ago he was 10 seconds from beating Metcalf."
For those who can not comprehend what someone is expressing through the meduim of the written word, I will break it down "Barney" style for you.
A week ago means, last week at the Big Ten Wrestling Tournament Finals! Not during the NCAA tournament which only lasted 3 days.
anyway, the drama of the '07 finals might've spoiled us a bit.
And I really though Mendez broke Jaggers ankle. I am glad he was ok.
So OSU gets a pass in my opinion. Go Gators
anyway, most impressive thing, beyond escopedo and scott, was perry's ability to ride tannebaum. truly the top-tier match of the finals. a couple of multiple AA's going at it. biggest surprise was poeta going down. but give keen credit. he only got truly defensive in the last minute. MOW i'd go with either perry, escobedo or metcalf. probably the latter because 149 seemed toughest in the country.
Have to add Morgan to the list of guys I'd like to have seen at least get a shot at the finals. Tough kid.
Nice article Ian.
Tony Rotundo
tech-fall.com
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