Last season didn’t end as Nebraska had hoped. With a chance at a team trophy going into the third day of NCAAs, Peyton Robb and Brock Hardy were both lost to injuries. The Huskers still finished in eighth in the team race, but their sights were set higher than that.

In contrast, things have been looking up for the Huskers ever since. Robb is ready to roll at 157, while 2022 NCAA finalist Ridge Lovett returns from redshirt. Hardy is fully healthy and just won a bronze medal at the U23 World Championships at 65 kilograms.

On top of that, Nebraska saw one of its up-and-comers nearly make the U20 World Team in Antrell Taylor before winning gold at the U20 Pan-Am Championships.

With nine wrestlers currently ranked at their weight class, Nebraska boasts top-end talent and depth — four of its wrestlers are ranked in the top six. This past weekend, the Huskers opened their season against North Dakota State and notched a 31-12 win with five of their wins coming with bonus points.

Robb Returns to the Mat

Less than eight months since having to medically forfeit out of NCAAs due to a rare skin infection in his leg that required multiple surgeries and skin grafts, Robb took the mat in Nebraska’s season-opener. He took off right where he left off with an 18-3 tech fall over NDSU’s Landon Johnson.

“You never would have thought in early April that Peyton Robb would be wrestling in early November,” Nebraska coach Mark Manning said. “It’s just miraculous. It’s just a testament to his courage and his intestinal fortitude. It was really cool to see, it was just like back to normal.”

In what can only be described as inspirational, Robb’s rapid recovery has been a morale boost for his teammates. 

“He’s a great leader and he really leads by his actions. He’s a man of few words to his teammates, but when he talks they really listen because he’s pretty intentional about his thoughts,” Manning said. “It’s another example for our team to really learn to be grateful for the opportunities they have and not to take them for granted.”

Ranked #3 in the country at 157, Robb is absolutely a title threat. What a story that would be.

The Return of Ridge Lovett

The top-ranked guy in the country at 149 pounds, Ridge Lovett is coming off a redshirt year he took as a junior. Having burned his redshirt as a freshman in 2020 to endure a tough weight cut to 133 pounds, Lovett wanted a year away from competition to work on his game in the room with his coaches.

Now a junior, Lovett is excited to show off his new skill set. Already an elite top wrestler, Lovett worked primarily on his attacks from neutral, and he put it all together in his season-opening 11-1 major decision win over #12 Kellyn March.

“I was mainly focusing on my feet while keeping the top and bottom going, but that’s not where I need all my work,” Lovett said. “Just focusing on developing more attacks on my feet, finishing faster, getting my shots faster, using the hand fight to set up my attacks – really just sharpening up all the neutral stuff while really perfecting the top and bottom work. It went real good. I got some new stuff coming.”

As a sophomore, Lovett went 24-4 and made it to the NCAA and Big Ten finals, falling to Yianni Diakomihalis and Sammy Sasso, respectively. 

This year, Lovett starts the season ranked #1. Will he finish there and be Nebraska’s first NCAA Champion since Jordan Burroughs did it in 2011?

“Yeah, absolutely – that is if Brock (Hardy) doesn’t beat me to it. He’ll wrestle the match before me so we’ll see,” Lovett said. 

Hardy's Hardware 

Fully healthy now, Hardy ran through the U23 World Team Trials bracket in June before taking home a bronze medal at the U23 World Championships just a couple weeks ago. 

“It was great to see Brock medal. He did a great job and had a really super-tough weight class. He was challenged in a lot of the matches,” Manning said. “It just showed how much his psyche and mental frame of mind has grown from last year to now. He’s become a better wrestler, but he’s just become mentally tougher. He’s just a guy who’s going to keep wrestling the entire match and he really demonstrated that.”

According to Hardy, all this experience he’s accumulated just in the last year will pay dividends this season. No longer a freshman taking the mat for the first time in a long time, Hardy sounds ready to take that next step.

“Last year everything was uncharted territory – even my freshman year, the Covid year, there was no crowd,” Hardy said of starting a few duals in 2021, the free-eligibility year. “Now, the only place I haven’t been is the NCAA finals. I’ve been to the Big Ten final, I’ve wrestled in big duals, I’ve wrestled at Carver-Hawkeye.”

Another area Hardy has been working hard on is his courage – according to him, he needs to wrestle with more of it.

“The biggest takeaway from last year was that I needed to always wrestle with more courage. My matches that I lost to (Iowa’s) Real (Woods), I lost real close matches, but they were matches that I didn’t take a lot of risk,” Hardy explained. “I lacked the courage to win. Even in matches that I won – sometimes I think I won close when I needed to be courageous and score more points.”

Hardy sat out Nebraska’s dual against NDSU but will be back in action against Campbell this Friday.

Silas Allred Returning Big Ten Champ

For the first time since Robert Kokesh did it in 2015, Nebraska had a Big Ten champion in 2023 with Silas Allred at 197 pounds. The redshirt freshman knocked off NCAA champion Max Dean of Penn State to do it too. 

When he got the starting nod last year, Allred said he initially prioritized winning over improvement. He felt like he put the results ahead of the development. 

“When the season started, I had winning on a pedestal. I had this huge emphasis put on winning matches. I took a couple lumps early on and that really discouraged me,” Allred said. “I had to kind of grow and mature through that and realize that in wrestling winning is not the ultimate goal, the ultimate goal is becoming the best wrestler you can be.”

It’s that mindset that helped Allred put together a 7-1 Big Ten dual record, dropping only a 3-2 decision to Jacob Warner. 

“Once I took down winning and put up becoming the best version of myself possible, I took off and it made me enjoy the sport more and embrace the opportunity more,” Allred said. “My wrestling just took off. I worked a lot with (assistant coach) Tervel (Dlagnev) just through that mindset stuff and my wrestling in general. Fortunately, I was able to really grow and mature through the season.”

And who in the room gives Allred the toughest go? Oh, just the big Olympic medalist at heavyweight that’s on staff.

“I wrestle with Tervel a lot. If I ever want to be humbled, I grab Tervel,” Allred said. “If I ever want to get beat up on, I grab Tervel.”

With the season just starting, Allred is focused on what’s in front of him, but it's the Big Ten grind that excites him the most. 

“It’s like there’s the start of the season, then there’s the start of the season when January rolls around and Big Ten season starts,” Allred said. “Big Ten season gets me amped up. This part of the year is fun and I really enjoy it, but Big Ten season gets me going.”

Allred looked in midseason form on Saturday when he beat NDSU’s Spencer Mooberry via 20-4 tech fall.

New Faces in the Lineup

The Huskers have five new starters this season. Some are replacing graduated seniors while a couple others beat out the incumbent starter at their weight.

During their wrestle-offs, redshirt freshmen Jacob Van Dee and Antrell Taylor both beat out last year’s starters. They’re both now ranked too, with Van Dee at #32 and Taylor at #26.

For Taylor, it was a move up in weight as he jumped from 157 to 165 to challenge preseason-ranked #9 Bubba Wilson for the job. With the win over Wilson in sudden-victory, Taylor is starting the year as the guy but the competition is ongoing according to Manning. 

Taylor did as good a job as he could have to keep the job, sticking his opening opponent Brendan Howes in the first period. According to Manning, his improvements are due to his practice habits and who he chooses to go against in the room.

“It might be a shocker to some people but what I’ve noticed from Antrell is he goes in the room this year and he either picks Peyton Robb, Ridge Lovett, James Green or Bubba Wilson to work out with every single day,” Manning said. “He picks out really good partners to go with — obviously those guys are really, really good.”

According to Lovett, Taylor is something special.

“He’s a superstar,” Lovett said. “I’ve been wrestling with Trelly a lot and he’s freaking tough, he’s tough – he’s fast, he’s strong, he’s super athletic.”

Van Dee moved up from 125 pounds to 133 and knocked off junior Kyle Burwick. As a redshirt a year ago, Van Dee beat ACC Champion Jarrett Trombley 7-3 down at 125. He started this season with a 5-1 win against Fernando Barreto.

Replacing graduated All-Americans Liam Cronin and Mikey Labriola are Caleb Smith and Elise Brown Ton, respectively. Smith was a two-time NCAA qualifier for Appalachian State before transferring to Nebraska this summer. The new starter at 125, he opened his season with a 9-5 win over NDSU’s Carlos Negrete Jr. 

“He’s just a workhorse,” Manning said of Smith. “We have to almost kick him out of the room.”

Brown Ton has been behind the scenes for a couple years behind Labriola at 174 pounds, but he’ll get his shot at starting this season. He brought a 29-6 career record into the season but he dropped his opening match 8-3 to Gavin Sax.

At heavyweight, redshirt freshman Harley Andrews enters the lineup. Andrews went 22-2 while redshirting last season with 12 pins. It looked like he’d be competing with transfer Owen Pentz from North Dakota State, but that is no longer the case with Pentz leaving the team and the sport. In his season-opener, Andrews lost via pinfall in the third period of a tight match against Devon Dawson.