Got back late last night from SMU, so haven't had a chance to watch the Clarion Open matches, but some encouraging signs there from Marlow and Brown.
If you read my
5 things we learned from the Blue-Gold Match, you know how impressed I was by him, and his performance in Clarion only supports that belief.
After Babin dominated Marlowe in the wrestleoff, I wasn't sure exactly what that meant, because I didn't know how good Babin was. Yes, he was an NCAA qualifier at Columbia and has a win over Camacho in his career, but you never know with fifth-year transfers.
Babin's dominance against Navy and Marlowe's Clarion showing and the eventual debut of Evan Tallmadge tells me that 125 should have very good depth this year, which few teams have. Whether or not Pitt is good enough at that weight to make some noise in the postseason remains to be seen.
On the other side, I was very disappointed with the Kranitz results. He really hung with Reece in the Blue-Gold Match, making me think he could be very close to his level, but the Clarion results do not show that. He lost 8-3 to Bucknell's Bartush - who went 0-2 at EIWAs last year - and 5-2 to Carson Thomas, who is a very good high school wrestler but who is, after all, still in high school.
