is this just a down year?
- Thread starter pitt90seven
- Start date
Yes. The team lost a lot from last year and the replacements are young and green. Cant expect much from dual meet perspective, but it will be fun to watch Phillippi, Wentzel, and Nino chase the podium at NCAAs
If those three place at nationals it would be one of Pitt’s best finishes in a very long time.
Will be hoping they do well. I just do not see the young guys showing much for the future. That is concerning to me especially after losing Steen. Usually there are guys being redshirted who can come in and contribute, but not this year since it is a free year and no reason to redshirt anyone.
Being Mr. Obvious, but....our recruiting has to get better.
I’ve been watching quite a bit of wrestling on the Big Ten Network, and it consistently reminds me of the staggering number of good PA wrestlers who are competing in that conference.
We often lament the good PA football players who play on Big Ten teams. But for me, it’s a much bigger insult to see the number of PA wrestlers whom Pitt loses to the Big Ten.
I’ve been watching quite a bit of wrestling on the Big Ten Network, and it consistently reminds me of the staggering number of good PA wrestlers who are competing in that conference.
We often lament the good PA football players who play on Big Ten teams. But for me, it’s a much bigger insult to see the number of PA wrestlers whom Pitt loses to the Big Ten.
Why Big Ten wrestling is like combining the top teams in the ACC, Big Ten, and SEC in football. The first step is to stop losing guys to other ACC and the other PA schools.
Bingo! Gavin is not only getting out recruited in PA by Iowa. PSU and OSU, he is getting out recruited by VT, NC State and UNC. And, it’s not getting any better. With the loss of Steen, the incoming class will be ranked behind the incoming classes at those three schools, and possibly also UVA’s incoming class.
No wrestler recruited to Pitt out of HS by Gavin has any chance of being on the NCAA podium. Matthews is the only wrestler he recruited out of HS who has a chance to be on the ACC podium. There will be a lot of PA wrestlers on that podium. Most of them just won’t be wearing Pitt singlets.
I have been watching Pitt wrestling for more than 60 years. In all of that time, I never recall seeing scholarship recruited wrestlers like Macgill and Badgett being consistently dominated by conference opponents. They haven’t just lost; they have been humiliated. And, Macgill redshirted last year. Has that helped him?
Gavin’s recruiting has been awful. It doesn’t take that long to turn around a wrestling program. VT did it in one year. OK, that was with Tom Brands, but they have gone through two coaches since him and haven’t missed a beat. NC State did it it one year, and has continued to consistently improve since. Coleman Scott did it at UNC in two years. They have surpassed us since Gavin arrived and the gap is continuing to widen with the recruiting classes they had in 2020 and have in 2021. We are struggling to keep up with UVA.
Anyone who thinks things are getting better, please rewatch the NC State, UNC and VT matches. And, explain to me how much Cole Mathews has improved under Gavin and how much Jared Macgill benefitted from his redshirt season.
Mike serious question...do you have some personal issue with Gavin or this staff? You know those programs didn't change in one year. Popolizio has been at nc state for 9 years and they weren't even remotely good until his sixth year. Gavin had pitt ranked 8th and they got 2nd in the acc in year three. Scott has been at UNC for 7 years.
Pitt is ranked 16th as a team, has 3 guys ranked in the top ten, wentzel just beat the returning national champ, Phillippi is ranked 3rd in the coaches poll and this is a "down year".
This isn't the acc of old or the ewl and pitt had 3 champs last year. 2 of those champs, philippi and thomas, were brought in by gavin and co.
Matthews will be fine. You know Badgett is a back up. The only accurate thing you said was Mcgill was awful and pitt has been getting out recruited by those teams. But recruiting takes time and this 2021 class looks to be their best one. Pitt didn't exactly have a great reputation when this staff took over.
...aaand there is the obligatory mike412 whine post
I'm a Pitt fan without a wrestling history, and just started to follow Pitt wrestling in the past few years, so please have patience with my questions here. Some of what Mike says seems to have some validity? When I watch Pitt wrestle, it seems as though half of their ACC opponents are from PA, and quite a few of them seem to be pretty darn good. Can someone who knows more than me explain what's right, and what's wrong in Mike's post? The team does seem to be trending down, after trending up for the past couple of years. Which incoming wrestlers will make an impact next season? How do you think the team will compete next year compared to this year? Thanks again-I'm not trying to stir the pot-just trying to gain more knowledge about the program.
What’s right about mikes post is that there are a lot of good pa wrestlers on other teams. PA is very strong in wrestling. Pitt does need to get better recruits. But the program had a very bad reputation when this staff took over so it makes sense recruiting will get better with time.
What’s wrong about what Mike said is pretty much everything else. He pretends other acc schools got better faster than what our current staff is doing with Pitt and that is clearly not true. In their third year this staff had our program 2nd in the acc and ranked 8th in the country. This year they have a worse dual meet team because they have some holes in the lineup but they could have their highest ncaa finish in years due to have 3 guys (Wentzel, Nino, Micky) with the potential to be all Americans. In wrestling, these dual meets do not matter for team standings. Team standings are determined by the NCAA tournament.
The program is not trending downward because we have more guys that are nationally revenant than before, and mike knows this. Jake Wentzel just beat the ncaa champion. I have been following Pitt wrestling for a long time and I honestly don’t remember the last time one of our guys beat a national champion. We haven’t had a national champion since coach Gavin back in 2008. Heck we haven’t had a real all American since Wills in 2015. So I am excited to have guys that can actually do something at the ncaas again.
Next year, the team will have all their studs back with Wentzel Micky and Nino returning. They will have most likely have upgrade at 157 with Mancini and at heavyweight with either Cooley growing into the weight or a healthy Whitehill. Guys like Camacho and Kemerer have shown improvement this year and they are still young so you would think that will continue. Mike seems to have an issue with Matthews that I don’t get. Matthews was a national qualifier as a freshman. He is clearly fighting through an injury this season and looks like will be at nationals once again as a sophomore. I think he can be an all American eventually. People act like he should already be an all American and I understand that but in reality Pitt hasn’t had an underclassman all American since the 80’s with Pat Santoro.
In short, Mike exaggerates and twist the facts to be extra negative. The team is fine and should have a good national tournament. Duals don’t matter for team standings. Next year their dual team should be better and they will have the same studs back on the team. They do need to make a jump in level of recruiting. They have done a good job of getting some big time transfers like Micky and Thomas but they need their 2021 and 2022 recruits to pan out because Micky and Nino will be graduating in two years and that’s big points at the nationals.
Thanks. I guess after watching the exciting dual meets last year, this year has seemed to be a bit disappointing. I'm used to watching football and basketball where each game matters. Thanks for clarifying that the meets aren't as important as I though. I guess wrestling families would understand that more than me lol.
Who are the good recruiters on staff? Are graduate wrestlers who train at the RTC allowed to recruit, or is that limited to the coaching staff?
I agree last year was a lot more fun to watch the duals. I’m hoping our dual team gets better in the near future. Wrestling is more of an individual sport but if you have a good dual team it should translate into a good tournament team because each guy on the team will score points at the tournament. However, there are some good dual teams that will not be good tournament team because all their guys are decent but they have no stars.
Pitts team this year is very top heavy. Meaning they have some stars like Micky, Nino and Wentzel and then they some guys that will not place at the tournaments. They need to fill those other weights with more capable guys or have the current guys improve. That is what vtech did. Last season vtech lost to Pitt in the dual and placed 5th out of 6 at the acc tournament. This year vtech went undefeated in duals and have a good shot at winning the acc tournament. Progress and improvement isn’t always steady. Vtech was pretty good, then had a down year and now they are really good. Pitt has their top guys that can go with anyone in the country but to have a top tier team they need to fill a few holes. I believe this will happen at Pitt eventually. This is only Gavins 4th season. For comparison, Popolizio at NC State is thought of as having the fastest growing program and it took him 6 years for them to be any good and this is his 9th year now.
I’m not sure who is the recruiter on staff, I’m sure they all have a had in it, but I do know the rtc guys cannot recruit. Recruiters have to be staff members
captainpitt excellent response I totally agree. but I do believe Gavin has to upgrade his recruiting.
Let me just reply to some of the bulls*t falsehoods, exaggerations and misrepresentations in Captainpitt’s post. I’m going to focus on his claim that Popolizio was at NC State six years before they became “any good.”
I guess we have different definitions of what “any good” is. After his 4th year at NC State, Popolizio was named Coach of the Year by FloWrestling. NC State went 23-1 in dual meets that year and finished 2nd in the Coaches Poll, behind PSU. They also won both the ACC dual meet title and the ACC tourney. This is Gavin’s 4th year. You think it compares?
But, he says, dual meets don’t really count. It is your standings in the NCAA tourney plus the number of All-Americans you have that determines how good a program is. NC State finished 11th at the NCAA championship in 2016. That is higher than Pitt ever has under Gavin. They had three All-Americans. That is the same number of potential All-Americans Pitt has this year. However, Micky and Nino and Jake all would have to actually be on the podium for us to match NC State in Popolizio’s FOURTH —not sixth — season.
What about All-Americans before his 4th season? Gavin has none. How did Popolizio do? Well, he had an NCAA champion in his SECOND season, Nick Gwazdioski, who repeated as the champion in his THIRD season and was 2nd in 2016, the only match he lost that year.
Yes, in his second year at NC State, Popolizio had a national champion. In his third year there he had a national champion and one more All-American. That is 3 more All-Americans and 2 more National Champions than Gavin had in his first three seasons ( to be fair, there were no NCAAs last year so neither coach had an opportunity to produce any more AAs).
In other words, in those allegedly poor seasons before NC State became any good, Popolizio had 2 National Champions and 6 NCAA All-Americans. That is 2 more National Champions and 6 more All-Americans than Gavin. But, yes, Popolizio took SIX years according to the knowledgeable Captainpitt before NC State became any good. Because all of that plus a 2nd place Coaches Poll finish and higher finishes in both the 2015 and 2016 NCAA tourneys than Gavin has had don’t mean that NC State was “any good” back then. I call bullsh*t.
How did Popolizio do it? The answer is recruiting. He had highly-ranked recruiting classes after both his first and second seasons at NC State. His 2016 recruiting class was ranked #1 nationally by both Intermat and Flo Wrestling. Six wrestlers from that class start for NC State and all are ranked. Five wrestlers in that class were ranked in the top 75 nationally in all weight classes in high school. His 2018 class was ranked #3 nationally by Intermat and #6 by Flo Wrestling. It had 4 wrestlers ranked by InterMat in the top 55 nationally and 5 in the top 100. The 2019 class has 4 wrestlers ranked among the top 100. The 2020 class was another top 10 class, ranked #8 by Flo Wrestling.
The rest of his claims are no more accurate than that one. I thought Gavin was a bad hire. I still do. He has done nothing to make me think he wasn’t. He is being outrecruited in the ACC by teams which don’t have anything resembling the home state talent we have, and they are coming into PA and getting better wrestlers than we are. The only really highly rated recruit in the senior high school class decommitted and now is going to PSU. That is the state of the program, and IMO the trajectory is either flat or downward.
I guess we have different definitions of what “any good” is. After his 4th year at NC State, Popolizio was named Coach of the Year by FloWrestling. NC State went 23-1 in dual meets that year and finished 2nd in the Coaches Poll, behind PSU. They also won both the ACC dual meet title and the ACC tourney. This is Gavin’s 4th year. You think it compares?
But, he says, dual meets don’t really count. It is your standings in the NCAA tourney plus the number of All-Americans you have that determines how good a program is. NC State finished 11th at the NCAA championship in 2016. That is higher than Pitt ever has under Gavin. They had three All-Americans. That is the same number of potential All-Americans Pitt has this year. However, Micky and Nino and Jake all would have to actually be on the podium for us to match NC State in Popolizio’s FOURTH —not sixth — season.
What about All-Americans before his 4th season? Gavin has none. How did Popolizio do? Well, he had an NCAA champion in his SECOND season, Nick Gwazdioski, who repeated as the champion in his THIRD season and was 2nd in 2016, the only match he lost that year.
Yes, in his second year at NC State, Popolizio had a national champion. In his third year there he had a national champion and one more All-American. That is 3 more All-Americans and 2 more National Champions than Gavin had in his first three seasons ( to be fair, there were no NCAAs last year so neither coach had an opportunity to produce any more AAs).
In other words, in those allegedly poor seasons before NC State became any good, Popolizio had 2 National Champions and 6 NCAA All-Americans. That is 2 more National Champions and 6 more All-Americans than Gavin. But, yes, Popolizio took SIX years according to the knowledgeable Captainpitt before NC State became any good. Because all of that plus a 2nd place Coaches Poll finish and higher finishes in both the 2015 and 2016 NCAA tourneys than Gavin has had don’t mean that NC State was “any good” back then. I call bullsh*t.
How did Popolizio do it? The answer is recruiting. He had highly-ranked recruiting classes after both his first and second seasons at NC State. His 2016 recruiting class was ranked #1 nationally by both Intermat and Flo Wrestling. Six wrestlers from that class start for NC State and all are ranked. Five wrestlers in that class were ranked in the top 75 nationally in all weight classes in high school. His 2018 class was ranked #3 nationally by Intermat and #6 by Flo Wrestling. It had 4 wrestlers ranked by InterMat in the top 55 nationally and 5 in the top 100. The 2019 class has 4 wrestlers ranked among the top 100. The 2020 class was another top 10 class, ranked #8 by Flo Wrestling.
The rest of his claims are no more accurate than that one. I thought Gavin was a bad hire. I still do. He has done nothing to make me think he wasn’t. He is being outrecruited in the ACC by teams which don’t have anything resembling the home state talent we have, and they are coming into PA and getting better wrestlers than we are. The only really highly rated recruit in the senior high school class decommitted and now is going to PSU. That is the state of the program, and IMO the trajectory is either flat or downward.
Mike, I’m not sure what your grudge is with Pitt wrestling so I’m going to leave it alone after this post. Yes Gwiz changed that program. He was a transfer from Binghamton, where Popolizio coached prior to nc state. Sorry it was year 4 before their team was “any good”, not year 6. You say Gavin hasn’t had any AA’s yet but you know there was no NCAA tournament last year, in his 3rd year. So you wanted all Americans and national champs in year 2? The nwca name 4 Pitt guys all Americans last season. Sounds like there was a good chance Pitt was going to do well at the ncaa tournament don’t ya think? They lost to nc state at the acc tournament that year by a narrow margin.
You know the things Nc state has done, like place in the top 10, have not been done at Pitt since like the 60’s but you want to blame this current staff. You also know that the acc was not anywhere close to the level it is today back when Popolizio took over nc state. You act like Pitt was some powerhouse before this staff took over but they definitely weren’t and they are better now than they were before. Again not sure what your issue is with the program so I’ll leave it alone.
It has not been unusual for Mike's posts to have this tone for several years, and I don't think it has just been about wrestling.
No, pretty much every post from mike is doom and gloom. For all sports
I will have to say one thing: it is not hard to be doom and gloom when you are discussing Pitt athletics over the past 5-6 years including almost all sports. It would be great to prove Mike wrong by Pitt winning at something.
What is considered winning though? I mean the volleyball team has won 3 straight ACC championships. The men's soccer team was ranked #1 in the nation and was runner up in the ACC. Wrestling was runner up in the ACC last year as well and had multiple ACC champions. Pitt softball won the Coastal a few years ago and was 1 out away from winning the ACC. Pitt football won the Coastal as well. I believe our mens swimming and diving are in the top 25. And I feel like we are improving overall in a few other olympic sports.
You aren't going to have instant success for the olympic sports that have only just started to be supported like 4 or 5 years ago. And I believe Victory Heights will help in that as well.
Also we need additional support from the fans and alumni. This admin seems to be pushing for the overall athletic department to move forward, has invested in improving facilities, paying for coaches, and now are trying to move forward with a $300M investment as well.
We keep seeing the "well this school did it, why can't Pitt". We can do it. We are doing it in soccer and volleyball right now. We did it in basketball in the 2000s. It's easy to point out those high points other schools are going through in ever sport when you are only focusing on the one succssful school while ignoring the other 100+ that are trying to do it as well (outside of the blue bloods in the respective sports). It's extremely difficult. And it's even harder to maintain over the long haul unless you have some mega donor focusing on that one sport.
Pitt can definitely improve. But I think we have also made strides from even 5 years ago. Results will be quicker for some, slower for others. But I'd rather be where we are, than in the 90s or early 2000s.
But Mike takes it to levels that most don't, and it goes on and on.
I am not defending Mike, but as a huge Pitt fan for 55 plus years, it has been tough in recent years especially football for many years, basketball for 5 years, and wrestling for many many years. I am a big Gavin fan and hope we get to the level that we wrestling fans can accept. Pitt should be at the level NCST(top 5ish) is at present. It is obvious to many on this board that recruiting needs an upgrade. Maybe some of the young guys will show a lot of improvement, but so far this year, I have not seen much To look forward to.
Can't disagree with any of this.
Speaking of recruiting, I'm not sure I understand the Steen decommitment. Did he actually sign an LOI, and, if so, how can he just reneg on that?
Wasn't that really unusual? I can't ever remember something like that happening with football or basketball, where an athlete became disenchanted with the school he signed with and was released from his LOI. I know it wouldn't be good for Steen to be forced to come to Pitt or not go anywhere else for a year, but still seems unusual.
Last edited:
Not going to go too deep into it but Steen's group was just rocking the boat too much not to release him. I am curious to watch how it works out for Steen at PSU because they are still chasing Cruz who is a junior that is higher ranked than him. The one thing going for Steen is he is probably a career 125er which is hard to find.
Steen's group. Interesting. Sounds like addition by subtraction in spite of his wrestling ability.
Is Colton a career 125? I'm still pretty new to wrestling so I don't know which traits determine that. He's quietly been the fourth-best guy in the lineup all year as a freshman though.
No special traits, it is all about body development and most guys end up growing out of it which is why 125 is the hardest to weight to recruit for. I think Colton will be 133er eventually but a lot depends on Micky.
He might have meant whether Micky uses his extra year of eligibility or not, rather than moving up. I think the fact that Michaels has been wrestling all year at 133 and 141 says something about the staff's plans at 25--but that was decided before GS decommitted, too.
micky will use his eligibility. As far as 125, I think Camacho is going to be the guy for a while unless we get a transfer.
Similar threads
