Junior world teamer Jacob Warner is making his collegiate debut on Saturday, November 24th against Purdue in Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The expectations are high and rising for this year's Iowa Hawkeyes and their teams in the not-too-distant future. Part of that comes from having blue chipper Warner at 197 pounds.

197lb Redshirt Report

The Illinois native finished #7 on the final 2017 Big Board, and was no doubt the most highly thought of 197lb prospect in at least a three year time frame. A three time state champ for Washington, he'll finally be making his attached debut this weekend.

Although Warner appeared in wrestle-offs, he was held out of the first three duals the past two weekends. Head coach Tom Brands wanted to ease him into the season after having to prepare all summer for Junior worlds; Warner also made a Cadet world team in 2016.

By holding him out of the first two competition dates, the coaching staff got to keep his legs fresh. His first weekend, he was slated to wrestle #2 Kyle Conel and last Friday would've hit #7 Pat Brucki. So he lost some opportunities to pick up big wins, and could've gotten revenge on Brucki from last year's Midlands. But they also might've felt he would have taken unnecessary losses if he wasn't at 100% strength.

No matter the reason, we finally get to see Warner in action for the first time in 11 months. Purdue has not yet released their projected starters, but Iowa's match notes have #10 Christian Brunner listed. However, Brunner is coming back from Romania and the Boilermaker staff may not want to throw Brunner back out into folkstyle competition right away. Brunner beat Warner 10-6 on the backside at Midlands last year.

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Not only will it be the first time he wears the Black & Gold singlet, it'll be his first time in front of the fans at Carver. Just last week, Austin DeSanto and Max Murin picked up pins in their maiden voyages at CHA.