Nico Megaludis and Nathan Tomasello put on a show in the 57kg quarterfinals at the U.S. Open in Las Vegas last week. Their match started slow but built to an incredible crescendo that went down to the wire. You can watch the full match here.

Tomasello lost on criteria to the eventual champion Tony Ramos, and Megaludis was forced to injury default after the Tomasello match. While neither of them made the finals, one thing became apparent: Both of these athletes have grown over the last few months. The following are some notes that I made about each of their wrestling styles that could prove interesting come World Team Trials in June. 

Nico wrestled from a knee more in college. While it makes sense that he would spend more time from space on both knees in a folkstyle setting (freestyle refs will ask you to get up and eventually hit you with a caution and two if you don't) that's not necessarily what I'm talking about. Nico has always down blocked to both knees, but he used to get caught in short offense quite a bit. In folkstyle, that is not that big of a deal. You can take your time fighting your way out of that position, and it usually winds up in a no-harm, no-foul scenario.



In freestyle, the position becomes dangerous mostly because of non-controlled exposure, so correcting your body position is important. Nico obviously made adjustments. Check out how Nico still double-down blocks to keep Nato off of his legs, but instead of staying engaged in the situation Nico immediately gets back to his feet and continues to hand fight. When you hear coaches talk about how they're working with their athletes on "the little things" or "specific positions," this is probably a good example.


Tomasello's change was a bit more drastic than Nico's. It looks to me that he Nato has become more reliant on his single leg, as opposed to his high crotch. One of the things that you can do to notice bigger changes like this is take a look at the earlier rounds of a tournament. In other words, if you just watch the finals you'll see Tomasello working his hardest to get to that Hi-C because that is his bread and butter. If you take a look at his round of 16 match at this year's U.S. Open and compare it to his earlier round matchups at the 2016 NCAA tournament, there are fewer high crotches and more single legs. 


2016 NCAA Quarter Finals


2017 US Open Round Of 16