Well Wilps lost decisively to Howe and we have no one in the semis.
First, the dual meet season means absolutely nothing. The announcers continuously refer to VT as the ACC champs and they are right. No one will care that Minnesota beat PSU in the duals and had the best dual meet record in the Big 10. All that counts is that PSU won the tournament.
As I said before the tournament began. We aren't a good tournament team. I hate to say this, but maybe Peters spent too much time on Rande's staff to know how to develop a good tournament team. After watching VT clean our clock in the ACC tournament, I have watched their wrestlers in the NCAAs pretty carefully, and there are three major differences I see between them and us: (1) they are aggressive; they take shots. Dance wrestled the best match of the tourney against Delgado. He lost and only scored one point, but he was aggressive. By contrast, in Zanetta's second match, he got taken down and then spent most of the rest of the match flat on his face. He didn't take a single shot in the last 5 minutes. (2) VT is much better conditioned and their wrestlers have been aggressive for all 3 periods. They are always looking for bonus points. They have won 3 matches with takedowns or reversals or escapes in the last 30 seconds of matches. Our wrestlers are dead in the water late in matches.
Besides Zanetta, look at Mack at 133. He was leading the #3 seed in the third period, got taken down and never came close to getting an escape. Then he came out and after winning one consolation bout got beaten this morning. He is a senior but he still lacks strength to compete against top 133 pounders and he almost never takes anything more than a half shot. I assume he lacks confidence to take a full shot. I don't know how he expects to win with that attitude and his career now is over.
At 141, Bright won his first match, was totally dominated in his second and faded in his consolation bought today, losing convincingly. Yes he is just a freshman, but I can't excuse the fact that his tank is empty in the third period because of that. He was up 4-3 against the Iowa kid and gave up 7 points in the last 90 seconds. I saw a number of true frosh who didn't run out of gas late in matches. Earlier this year, I said I thought that although he lost to Retherford he had a bigger upside. I don't believe that now. He was much less competitive against him in the tourney than in the dual meet. His collapse today was due to nothing more than an empty tank.
At 149, Mikey was leading the #3 seed in the third period and again, in a disturbing Pitt trend, ran out of gas and got beat. Then he got dominated in his consolation match to go 0-2. Compare that to English, the 149 pounder from PSU. He is a walk-on who is their third stringer at that weight. But both Alton and the backup were injured for the Big 10 championship and he wrestled and finished 7th. Then he came to the NCAAs unseeded, won his first match, lost his second 5-4 on a takedown with less than 15 seconds left, and won his consolation this morning. He is a walk-on. Mikey is a 2 or 3 time PIAA champion.
At 174, Tyler wrestled two workmanlike matches but was just bad against Howe. He didn't take a shot until he was hopelessly behind in the final minute. He let Howe control his head during the entire match. He did nothing. Period.
At 184, Max was a very unimpressive winner in his first match and a very unimpressive loser in his second match to a wrestler from Old Dominion. Yes he lost in OT but he did nothing at all in the final 3 minutes of that bout.
At 197, Bono wrestled Gainst Perry from VT. I think the match illustrated the difference between the two programs. I believe Bono lost to Perry twice this year, both by a point and one in a controversial call in OT. But in their first round match, Perry dominated him. Perry now is in the semis. Bono came back and won his first consolation bout by a pin. I haven't seen the consolation bouts yet at 184-Hwt as I write this.
Rande's teams consistently underachieved at the NCAAs. There was no mindset that even after you lose you still can be an All-American and finish third. They were consistently poor in consolation bouts, frequently losing to wrestlers they had beaten earlier in the year. Unfortunately, that mindset and conditioning issue appears to have carried over to the new regime. Maybe it can be changed, but I didn't see a glimmer of hope for that either at the ACC tourney or in the NCAAs so far. Teams we beat in duals are far ahead of us in the NCAAs. Teams we won 5 matches against in the duals, like Oklahoma State and Edinboro, are so far ahead of us that we aren't even in the same zip code in the tourney because they are so far ahead of us. This ACC tourney and this showing have turned me from being very optimistic about the future of the program to being very skeptical.
