Behind Iowa’s competition between Nelson Brands and Cash Wilcke to be the go-to man at 184 is freshman Abe Assad. 

He attended Midlands last season as a spectator. Now, he’s returning home for his first major collegiate tournament and a chance to show how much he’s learned in the room so far this season. 

“I’m not going there for second, I’m not going in there just to place, I’m not going there to get a couple matches in,” Assad told FloWrestling. “I’m going in there to wrestle and win the tournament. That’s my mindset.”

Wrestling unattached so far this season, Assad holds an 11-2 record and is coming off of his first tournament win at the Jim Koch Open on Dec. 7. Five of his wins have come via bonus points, including two pins, one of which came 56 seconds into his second college-level match. 

The Midlands bracket, however, isn’t going to be an easy one to navigate for Assad, even just looking at his Iowa counterparts. 

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Brands is now ranked No. 9 in the nation after taking down then-No. 7 Sam Colbray of Iowa State in TB1 on Nov. 24. 

He sat out Iowa’s dual against then-No. 6 Wisconsin as Wilcke lost to unranked Johnny Sebastian in SV2. Then, against Princeton, Brands took a loss of his own — the first of his career of sparring off in the Iowa wrestling room. Unranked Travis Stefanik ousted him, 7-6, on Dec. 8. 

“You could say they’re kind of completely opposite styles, in a way,” Assad said of Wilcke and Brands. “Wilcke’s really fast-twitch; he’s fast on his feet, really, really athletic. Brands is kind of the opposite. He beats you up with his hands; it’s almost impossible to get to his legs.”

As the frontrunners at the weight for Iowa, Brands and Wilcke provide a key practice element for Assad. 

“It gives me two different feels,” Assad said. “Each guy you wrestle in here had a different feel, and that’s one of the best things about this room.”

For head coach Tom Brands and his team of coaches, Midlands gives them a chance to figure out the situation at 184 and who will emerge from the battle of the weight. 

And for wrestlers like Assad, who are likely to be in the wings for this season, the focus is exactly like he said: to win. 

“This is about being the best that you can be one match at a time,” Tom Brands said. “It’s a barometer there for freshmen and it’s a barometer for our number one seeds or our high-powered guys.”

184 isn’t the only weight that Midlands could settle. 141 pounds has been a battle between Carter Happel and Max Murin so far this season. 

“‘41 seems to be going that way with Murin, but don’t tell Happel that because he has every intention of being the guy,” Brands said. “There’s a lot of things that are in play here.”

With 22 wrestlers set to compete at Midlands from the Hawkeye room, there are multiple athletes at multiple weights — not just 141 and 184 — going for their chance to battle for a tournament championship. 

For those with pretty set lineup spots, it’s a chance to improve and battle with the best in their respective weight classes.

“This is just them taking the next steps in their career,” Brands said. “Go in there and belong.”

Anna attended the University of Iowa, where she covered multiple sports from volleyball to football to wrestling. She went to Pittsburgh in March 2019 for the NCAA DI Wrestling Championships and did live coverage of the entire event and Spencer Lee’s second-straight NCAA title. Follow here on Twitter.