Arnold will go at 174 with CStar but does everyone remember the match last year between CStar and Nelson Brands? Arnold will do nothing but push Starocci away to keep the score down and hope for a last second steal.I wouldn't be shocked to see other Hawks do the same.
I think Brands will have Colinedo on the circle tread mill first period and anytime both wrestlers are on their feet. Ref is going to dictate some of it.Won’t be at nationals but will be at Big Ten’s and you bet!
Also - I edited the post to include a couple common opponent scores from this season. In case you want to rethink your foolishness.
To save hawk fans the embarassment, and save the noble GIAs the trouble of visiting other boards to defend them, Carver will have drop boxes for distraught fans to put their glasses in. Carver staff will smash your glasses in privacy. Bigbucksbob will be selling Dollar Store reading glasses for $19.95 at all carver cone locations.
So give Iowa a bonus win at 174 by sending Joe Lee against a rejuvenated Kennedy for the sake of just letting Starocci beat Gabe over some comments he made a while ago? You might have played yourself lol
Plus, the meet may be out of hand by the time 184 rolls around, so Brands might not throw out Arnold just to troll PSU. Terry would be home already.
Random4598375:
Penn State wins by such a wide margin at recruiting and development that the portal is pretty much unnecessary. The PSU portals do tend to be more like Nagao, Mesenbrink, Kerk who are more or less re-recruits with most/all of their eligibility. There's no need to put patches on lineup holes. Getting Truax was nice, but PSU is still winning nationals with Cochran or Ball at 184 (or Barr or even Facundo for that matter).
But Truax getting to wrestle his final year at his Dream School is such a great story, so I'm glad it happened.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm certainly glad to have him, too, but he's not the lynch pin of a championship team, and I don't think Cael pursued him very vigorously. In fact, he would be far more critical to Iowa's lineup than he is at Penn State, and if reports are accurate, they pursued him much harder. He's one of the people who recruited Penn State as much as Penn State recruited him. I said at the time that what every other program in the country should fear the most was the picture that surfaced of Truax at 10 or 11 with a Penn State national champs T-shirt on. This generation of elite wrestlers have now all grown up knowing nothing but Penn State dominance and dynasty, and they now view it as the place to be and want to get in here.
Actually it’s a believable post. It seems that Iowa has had an inordinate number of injuries over the last few seasons. Look what happened to Kemmerer, Eierman and Lee. All of them fizzled in their final seasons with injuries being one of the main reasons.
For being a womans basketball school, I still think Iowa has a decent wrestling program...
LOL, this argument needs to be expanded on in IronTurd’s thread when he’s allowed back.
Iowa fans keep putting Gabe into the lineup at 184 because it’s a black hole for them and he did it once at CyHawk, but Gabe said it was a one-off and that he believes he’s too short for 184. Given that Truax is a long and lean 184, Gabe probably considers it a bad matchup for himself, and I highly doubt this happens. Furthermore, Gabe spent the offseason calling out Starocci, calling him overrated, and saying he’s coming to beat him this year. If Gabe actually goes, it will 100% be at 174.
I agree with this. Michigan aside, Brands has had his guys ready to go and out-coached both Nebraska and Iowa State, which were ripe for upsets. I expect lots of matches like Carter-Nelson last year, pushing, trying to keep it close, and trying to steal it at the end. I admit I cringe a little when I hear folks talk about shutouts... Top 5 match ups, at least 3 weight classes, and it's in Carver... there's always something unexpected that happens in this match... I believe the good guys win, but again, despite the loss to Michigan, Iowa will be ready to roll on Friday, and still, I believe it is the toughest match of the season. I have a hard time seeing it any other way...I do think it will be PSU's closest match of the season. Too many close matches to predict a score but I believe that Iowa will bring their best. I just root for both sides to be injury-free........and that Penn State wins every match
Agreed. Tom really does deserve credit for how he’s deployed his guys this year.
The other way to look at this is that Tom is trying to win dual meets instead of keeping his guys healthy, helping them get better, and peaking for March. That's why this one will be close. He will do everything to try to steal one from his hated rivals, especially at home. Every big dual for him is just reinforcing that low-scoring, tough it out even though you're injured, push out, beg for a stall call, steal a close match at the very end mentality that ends up biting them in the ass come March.
