With four dual meets and two tournaments under their belt, the Buckeye wrestling team is rolling. Ranked No. 1 in the country by a trio of media outlets that rank potential tournament placers and the No. 2 dual-meet team in the country, Ohio State is on the road this weekend for a pair of dual meets to close out 2017 action.
The first stop is Newark, Del., to face the Princeton Tigers (0-2). Ohio State won seven of 10 weight classes at the Princeton Open to start the season, and a clean sweep of this dual isn't out of the question.
Savvy readers will notice that Princeton is actually in New Jersey, but the meet will take place at the Carpenter Center at the University of Delaware.
"It's the night before one of the biggest high school tournaments of the year, one of the toughest tournaments of the year, so a great opportunity for us to showcase the program in front of the nation's best prospects," head coach Tom Ryan explained.
That tournament, the 25th Annual "Beast of the East" will feature wrestlers from nearly 120 of the top high school wrestling programs in the country, including several big name programs from the Buckeye State.
Class of 2018 recruits Sammy Sasso and Quinn Kinner are among the future Buckeyes seeded in the two-day affair, which will stream live via TrackWrestling. Ryan and his staff, including Anthony Ralph, the man Ryan calls the "Mark Pantoni of Buckeye wrestling," will be evaluating talent and furthering the efforts to keep reloading the program with top-shelf talent.
Buckeye Breakdown
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0-2, 0-0 Ivy League ROSTER / SCHEDULE |
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7 P.M. – FRIDAY, DEC. 15 CARPENTER CENTER NEWARK, DEL. |
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TRACKWRESTLING Live Streaming ($) |
Ohio State enters the weekend 4-0, fresh off a win over Big Ten foe Indiana. They return to non-conference action with the trip to Princeton, followed by Sunday's visit to Atlanta to face Chattanooga.
The win over the Hoosiers was never in question; nonetheless, Ryan said he expected his men to score more points over a clearly-overmatched Indiana roster.
"We didn't look as crisp as I thought we might," he said. "I think Indiana wrestled hard."
He noted that the team was not only prepping for competition on the road, as the dual was hosted near Akron, but also dealing with final exams and coming off a big weekend winning the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational.
"I think historically that's a hard weekend, they're getting ready for finals, and you're coming of a weekend at Vegas where you have an emotional letdown," he said. "I expected us to be more dominant than we were, so these next two meets, I expect to see more scoring."
| Wt | Ohio State | Princeton |
|---|---|---|
| 125 | Brakan Mead (6-8) | Jonathan Gomez (8-4) |
| 133 | No. 4 Luke Pletcher (14-0) | Trey Aslanian (0-2) |
| 141 | No. 6 Joey McKenna (2-0) | Pat D'Arcy (7-5) |
| 149 | No. 5 Ke-Shawn Hayes (15-1) | No. 7 Matthew Kolodzik (7-0) |
| 157 | No. 5 Micah Jordan (12-2) | Mike D'Angelo (9-2) |
| 165 | No. 11 Te'Shan Campbell (11-2) | Jonathan Schleifer (4-3) |
| 174 | No. 3 Bo Jordan (14-0) | Carlin Powell (5-5) |
| 184 | No. 2 Myles Martin (14-0) | Kendall Elfstrum (2-4) |
| 197 | No. 1 Kollin Moore (10-0) | No. 20 Patrick Brucki (10-2) |
| HWT | Kevin Snyder (12-6) | Michael Markulec (3-6) |
Looking to Princeton, most of the starters are back in the lineup, with only Nathan Tomasello and Kyle Snyder out of action. Tomasello will likely return to competition in January, as he continues rehabbing an October knee injury; Snyder is training with Team USA in Colorado Springs, but will rejoin the Buckeyes Sunday for their match with Chattanooga in Atlanta.
No. 3 Bo Jordan, who came back from Vegas a little worse for wear and skipped the Indiana dual, will return to action, as will No. 11 Te'Shan Campbell, who Ryan said was held out of last weekend's meet because he needed to focus on finals. Their replacements went 1-1 on the weekend, with Cody Burcher getting the win at 165, and Fritz Shierl coming up short.
No. 5 Ke-Shawn Hayes was the only wrestler to post bonus points versus Indiana, scoring a first-period tech fall and coming close to earning the vaunted #PinChain. No. 6 Joey McKenna had the weekend's only win over a ranked opponent, earning the decision over then-No. 13 Cole Weaver.
The Princeton Tigers
Head Coach: Chris Ayres
Ayres is building a consistently respectable program at Princeton, having qualified a program-record seven wrestlers for the 2017 NCAA Championships, with No. 7 Matthew Kolodzik finishing as an All-American. In Ayres' first two years, Princeton went 0-35; in the seven years since, he's been named the EIWA Co-Head Coach Of The Year (2017) and twice named the Ivy League Head Coach Of The Year (2016, 2017).
The Tigers placed 5th at the Navy Classic a month ago, and then dropped a pair of dual meets to Top-10 opponents Lehigh and Virginia Tech, the latter of which was hosted at Madison Square Garden last Sunday.
"Coach Ayres has done a great job with that team, there will be some great matchups," Ryan said. "They have a host of good guys, so it should be a great dual."
The Buckeyes have not faced Princeton in a dual since 1984, a 28-9 victory for the Scarlet & Gray. The only other meeting between the two schools came in 1976 when the Tigers came away victorious (26-16).
Notable Princeton Wrestlers
No. 7 Matthew Kolodzik - 149 pounds
"[149 pounds] will be the match of the night, with Hayes and Kolodzik, that's a big matchup," Ryan said. "This will be the biggest test of the year for Ke-Shawn."
Ryan said his redshirt sophomore "keeps getting better by the week," singling out his first-period tech fall as an example of his abilities. "The only way you do that is to be really good on top."
Kolodizk is undefeated on the season, though he's faced half as many opponents as has Hayes to this point. The Bellbrook, Ohio native went 30-4 last season, becoming Princeton's first freshman All-American in history, placing 7th at the NCAA tournament.
Hayes will by far be his toughest opponent of the season to date, having faced only one other ranked opponent thus far, #19 Cortlandt Schuyler of Lehigh, a decision he won 4-2. Hayes, on the other hand, has wins over four Top-20 opponents thus far this season.
No. 20 Patrick Brucki - 197 pounds
Ryan also highlighted the 197-pound matchup between No. 1 Kollin Moore and No. 20 Patrick Brucki as one to watch. Brucki, a freshman and former state champ from Illinois, comes from a big wrestling family: one brother wrestles currently at Central Michigan, and an uncle is head coach at Eastern Illinois.
His 10 wins include an 8-7 upset over No. 7 Chris Weiler of Lehigh, and his two losses include last week's 2-0 decision by No. 3 Jared Haught, the man Moore pinned in the championship match of the Cliff Keen Invitational.
Match Outlook
As with last week's dual versus Indiana, talent should easily win out here, and that means the Buckeyes walk away with a minimum of seven wins, and could conceivably sweep the meet.
Luke Plectcher, Myles Martin, McKenna and Moore all arrive in Delaware undefeated, and Moore is the only one of the quartet who will be challenged in any way... In fact, McKenna is the only other one of the four facing a wrestler better than .500 on the season.
Brakan Mead, the true freshman standing in for Tomasello, is 6-8 to date, and faces a fellow true freshman in Jonathan Gomez. Gomez is 8-4 on the season, including a 7-1 decision over Mead at the Princeton Open at the beginning of the season.
Kevin Snyder will stand in for his elder brother, but faces a wrestler who is 3-6 on the year... a record that includes a tournament loss to Buckeye redshirt Chase Singletary.
Action kicks off tonight at 7 p.m., and will stream live via TrackWrestling ($).
