Originally posted by RNGwaddie:
Originally posted by oberebo:
Nolan Boyd climb in the rankings slightly after pinning Stroh who was #16 while Nolan was #17. He will be hard pressed to stay with Meeks in the finals but if he could he would rise a lot.
what is "
a lot"?
This post was edited on 12/21 9:21 PM by RNGwaddie
Obviously, I posted this before the finals. I am like Wheeling and watched his finals match in awe. He totally dominated the 6th or 7th rated guy in the country who is an All-American and came down from 197 a year ago. In this toufrnament he trashed both the 16th and the 7th rated wrestler in the country according to flo rankings. By a "lot" I mean he should now be ranked in the top ten and I would be surprised if he is not. If we could infuse Nolan Boyd's attitude and competitiveness in all our wrestlers we would win a national championship this year.
There was both good and bad in this tournament. We started the day not knowing how good we could be at 184 and found out we could be very good. We started the day thinking that at 141 we might have a good answer and found out we did in spades. Dean Heil had at least three and mostly four or more takedowns in every match and definitely dominated his opponent in the finals. Our questions at 141 and 184 have for the most part been answered. At 174 Jordan Rogers has been a mystery this year showing signs of being good and then fading at the end. He came in 4th at this tournament and lost only by a 1-1 score to the eventual champion who was seeded second and then losing to the top seed Gutches in the third place match. Between those two losses he put together 4 very good matches and if he can continue to make improvements he could definitely be a factor in March.
That is the good news coming out of this tournament where we left 4 starters at home. The biggest disappointment in the tournament was the wrestling of Chandler Rogers who I believe will be a super star in the future. He seemed to wrestle uninspired and did not look like the Chandler we have seen in the past. It was a bad debut for him and hopefully it was the excitement of his first major college tournament which affected his wrestling. Time will tell on that. We came into the tournament with everyone thinking and knowing our major hole was at 133 and found that while Brian Crutchmer is not the
answer that we may not have an answer this year. Gary Wayne finished fourth and he is marginally better than Crutchmer at this point but do we want to pull him out of red shirt as a true freshman when both in the big 12 and nationals he could end up not much better than Crutchmer at this point. We have a lot of depth at 141 with Davey Dolan, Mike Magaldo and Dusty Hone representing us well with Dolan 4th and Magaldo fifth and Hone wrestling well. However, none of these wrestlers appear to be able to make the cut to 133. Magaldo beat the #1 seed Cole Mendenhall at this tournament and probably the most polished of the backups at 141 but he is a true freshman. Dolan is a very big 141 pounder coming down from 149 and Hone has grown a lot this year and may eventually grow out of 141.
We gained and lost in this tournament but overall I do not think John would be disappointed. We definitely cemented our spots at 141 and 184 but have big question marks at 133 and 197.