If you divide the points scored by the number of wrestlers we came in 52nd out of 70 teams
Wrestling 2026 Rutgers NCAA Tournament Thread
- Thread starter Leonard23
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Bill I don't want to put you on the spot,but truth be told, they are fairing better than us come March. Goody has to do something. I get it, when it rains, it pours. When scott and the team are doing well , everybody's in love with him again. When they do poorly , they want his head on a stake. Unfortunately that's new jersey and the wrestling fans. I don't know what the solution is, I can't make the decisions, but something has to change.If we could land a Braeden Davis, a Corchoran or a Mullen we'd be in great shape.
Wng, dual meets are nice but it’s more important to get it done in the postseason.. in all sports, it’s good to have a regular season, to be in a better position, for the postseason…
The service academies are a special case. They do not operate like a standard D1 program for obvious reasons.
I understand the point you’re trying to make but that’s a flawed statistic. As an extreme example, a team composed of a one top seed and 6 guys seeded 28-33 would most likely have a lower point per wrestler average than a team composed of just one highly seeded qualifier.
The bottom line is no stat we look at shows out in our favor whatsoever so basically its bad all the way around. We cannot spin it any other way.
we had 2 moments. Cotton over a very injured Elam (not taking anything away from him) and Catka beating Taylor/getting to Qtrs.
Crackers
I am not pleased with March either. I don’t know the answer but I see how hard these kids and coaches work in practice. I also don’t believe we should discount anything that transpires during the season in dual meets. I don’t think the answer is to fire the coaches. Peterson and Soldano transferred to blue chip coaches and environments yet fared the same in March as they did at RU. The answer is to get a Knox or Hare level kid who can go far in March like Suriano and Ashnsult did.
I am not pleased with March either. I don’t know the answer but I see how hard these kids and coaches work in practice. I also don’t believe we should discount anything that transpires during the season in dual meets. I don’t think the answer is to fire the coaches. Peterson and Soldano transferred to blue chip coaches and environments yet fared the same in March as they did at RU. The answer is to get a Knox or Hare level kid who can go far in March like Suriano and Ashnsult did.
The only reason dual meets during the regular season has been discounted is bc of the continued lack of postseason success… are we just peaking too early? Otherwise, dual meets are great but it loses a little luster when that’s the only thing RU is seemingly good at it… not to mention it stinks we can’t even qualify for the paycom dual tourney in the format we have excelled in.
No one actually wants to see Goodale fired.. he is very likable and everyone wants to see him succeed but when RU has been on the downswing since the peak year of 2019 people are going to start questioning if Goodale is still the most qualified head Coach that can take RU to become an eventual “Perrenial top 10 team” in the wrestling hotbed of NJ or is that just simply impossible.
This happens in all fanbases when teams don’t perform to expectations… in our case, 1 maybe 2 AA if we r lucky(NO ONE EXPECTING PSU RESULTS).. even Iowa fans were starting to question if Brands still have it to take Iowa back during their bad season. And Iowa ended up outperforming their expectations going into the postseason.
Unfortunately, sometimes top recruits don't pan out and it has nothing to do with the coaches. This is taking responsibility:
Bill: You are in a tough position of loving wrestling, loving the team members, and having a close relationship with the coach(es). Like a parent (or grandparent), you view it personally.
I've said more than a couple of times that duel meets do matter. The idea of a dual team vs. a tournament team is false. Doing one without the other will just shift the complaints from one to the other. The dissatisfaction when we have a bad duel is obvious to anyone reading the duel threads in this forum. Prioritizing one over the other is a false choice. An enthusiastic fan base wants both and won't be happy without them. There are ten weight classes, and each is important.
The answer of getting Knox and Harer here is not the answer on its own; they have to be developed, and that's what has been sub-par. There is too long a list of talented recruits that didn't pan out (Leonard's favorite excuse). There really is only one solution, but Rutgers is notoriously bad at making those decisions. I think you know that I hadn't called for Goodale's replacement until Donnie left. I had hoped Goodale would get smarter about his approach (process) and harped on it long enough to realize it isn't going to happen.
There is a solution. If we want Rutgers to be elite, Rutgers needs an elite coaching staff. I, like several others, don't want to see Goodale hurt. I think he deserves better from Rutgers, and he could serve well in a different role (new girls' wrestling coach?). However, if he were replaced by anyone other than a highly accomplished and big-name coach, it wouldn't work. We had Donnie, Buxton, and Seabass, yet something was in the way of getting the best from those talents. They are now excelling on their own.
Lastly, I see some not wanting to recognize Peterson and Soldano for their performance this year. No, each came up short of AA, but both performed better during the season. They held higher ranks with greater consistency than all or most Rutgers guys, and both had good years. Maybe if they had more than just one year with their programs, they'd have done better. I believe both would have been multiple AA's if they had gone to better programs. Peterson wrestled Lillydahl as close as McGowen in the final, losing by one point in the quarters. Peterson had a better year. Soldano also made it to the quarter-final before losing both the quarter-final and the blood round by one takedown. Soldano was replaced at Rutgers by Walsh, who lost in the first round, then was eliminated 12-1 by the guy that Soldano beat in the second round. Soldano had a better year.
Peterson had a better record last year, a higher individual ranking, and beat the reigning national champ in the national tournament. He was a blood round guy as a freshman, a blood round guy in his final year here, and a blood round guy in his lone year elsewhere. That’s who he is and that’s who he was, a guy who viewed himself like he was better than everyone else and got complacent.
I’m all for the development discussion, I think there are certainly enough examples of guys not reaching their full potential, but miss me with the fallacy that Peterson went to Iowa and had a better season. He was the same wrestler there as he was here.
And Soldano had a worse record in a significantly worse conference at Oklahoma than his best year at Rutgers. The difference is he won literally one more match in a tournament, which could be attributed to many factors. He didn’t develop either, because his wrestling style is extremely flawed and you saw it in the 3rd period of the blood round where he did what he always does.
I’m all for the development discussion, I think there are certainly enough examples of guys not reaching their full potential, but miss me with the fallacy that Peterson went to Iowa and had a better season. He was the same wrestler there as he was here.
And Soldano had a worse record in a significantly worse conference at Oklahoma than his best year at Rutgers. The difference is he won literally one more match in a tournament, which could be attributed to many factors. He didn’t develop either, because his wrestling style is extremely flawed and you saw it in the 3rd period of the blood round where he did what he always does.
Than his best year? Yeah, that's the point, he wasn't developed. He and Poz had better freshman years. He finished well ahead of his replacement at Rurgers. Peterson? He started last season as Intermat #9 and ended the season #16. This year, while I didn't track him, he started Intermat top ten and finished #7. But you'll believe what you want.
Do you care more about rankings or results? Both years he was a blood round guy. Not sure how we rank a guy #7 when he didn’t make the top 8 nationally.
How you doing Mineo? Still not convinced we need a new head coach?
Below are the recruiting rankings for Rutgers from 2020 other 2025
2020 15th
2021 17th
2022 8th
2023 14th
2024 4th
2025 13th
I do not understand how one can imply that Recruiting is the reason for finishing in the mid-30s twice in recent years. If you said we are not doing proper due diligence on the kids we sign, I could accept that.
Yeah I looked up the rankkngs last season after the recruiting excuses flew around after the National tournament. Recruiting is not the reason Rutgers can't get inside the top 20.
If recruiting is not the reason for RU finishing in the mid 30s then what is the reason?
If recruiting is not the reason RU can’t get inside the top 20 then what is?? How are Rider/Princeton/George Mason/Columbia performing better at nationals with less heralded recruits??
“Below are the recruiting rankings for Rutgers
from 2020 other 2025
2020 15th
2021 17th
2022 8th
2023 14th
2024 4th
2025 13th”
How come these recruiting classes haven’t resulted in more AA/better nationals ,COMPARATIVELY, to other programs getting worst recruiting classes?? Are we selecting the right recruits/maximizing the most of our resources?? I remember when everyone was celebrating roster log jams”iron sharpen iron” I was questioning if that was best use of resources… for example, we got Smith, whom was a 113 pound recruit and clear career 125er. And then we recruit 3-4 more 113 pounders.. I mean that’s great if we got unlimited resources, but not sure how that is going to work out. There’s always things to improve on I’m just asking questions. So after seeing all these nice recruiting classes, if it’s not recruiting then what it is the excuse now?
Why do you keep saying this is Mineo? He obviously says he isn't. Is there some sort of empirical proof?
Teams with worse classes annually can get inside top 20. Rutgers does ok receuiting. Could it be better? Sure. I think Coach Goodale has done decently with rhis though.
Easy, a lot of those classes were ranked on quantity not quality. Thus, we have a lot of middling to low ranked wrestlers in the room. While the team has no glaring holes, like kids getting their a$$ kicked every match, we also don't get the top end AA types either.
I always thought these class recruiting rankings were flawed in that they put too much weight in quantity over quality. Some people on here think since we been getting decent recruiting classes then it must be the coaching as to why it hasn’t translated to more post season success.. I’d like to think it has to do more with who we getting and roster management.. we are getting a bunch of mid tier recruits and just throwing them all in same weight class and seeing what sticks. Perhaps going for more top end AA types while giving up a few glaring holes will prove to be a more fruitful recruitment strategy??
Recruiting and roster management is part of the coaching job. However, the term coaching in the traditional sense.. and what some people on here are questioning is more about the staff’s abilities in improving performance, developing skills, achieving goals, and unlocking a individual’s potential.
I’m more so questioning, if RU been getting nice recruiting classes, why haven’t we been getting the results we wanted, then maybe it’s been our recruiting strategy/roster management/best use of maximizing resources that’s been the problem and not the staff’s abilities to coach up the wrestlers, but that’s up for debate.
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