Of all the meets to lose, Ohio State would have preferred any dual but this one.
Facing its hated rival Michigan at home in Value City Arena before the largest crowd of the season, in a nationally-televised dual no less, Ohio State needed its top-ranked leaders to hold serve, and its first-year starters to have a strong showing against a team loaded with talent and hungry to remain undefeated.
It didn't quite work out that way.
Ohio State won just four out of 10 matches, and senior leaders Joey McKenna, Micah Jordan and Myles Martin couldn't score enough bonus points to make up for the matches their teammates lost.
To some extent, Ohio State has built itself more as a tournament team than a dual-meet team, but losing this meet will sting a little. Last season, the Buckeyes only lost to Penn State, and everyone loses to Penn State; the year prior, they dropped three duals, but Kyle Snyder didn't wrestle versus Iowa or at Cornell.
What Went Right
Ohio State's top-ranked captains did what they were supposed to do: win, and with bonus points attached.
Joey McKenna continues to impress as one of the most dominant technical wrestlers in the business. He's currently ranked No. 2 in the country, and there is little question that he'll be contending for the NCAA title in Pittsburgh.
Facing No. 5 Kanen Storr at 141 pounds, McKenna looked like he may as well have been wrestling an unranked freshman rather than a Top-5 competitor with two seasons under his belt. He reeled off a pair of six-point moves in the first period, and a takedown in each of the subsequent periods secured the tech fall.
No. 2 Joey McKenna thumped No. 5 Kanen Storr at 141 pounds.
Micah Jordan followed up with a major decision at 149 pounds over Malik Amine. Jordan would have liked to have earned the tech, but Amine hung around and Jordan had to settle for the major. That difference would prove important later in the meet.
Facing unranked opponents at 184 and 197, Ohio State expected – and needed – tech falls or better. No. 1 Myles Martin earned a tech fall at 184 pounds, as expected, but couldn't get his man on his back for the fall.
It's hard to fault a guy for getting the tech, and Ohio State probably felt pretty good at that point in the meet with No. 2 Kollin Moore on deck. However...
Where It All Went Wrong
Kollin Moore, like Myles Martin, faced an unranked opponent in the meet's penultimate match. With the Buckeyes down by two points in the team score at that point, a tech fall or better would have taken some pressure off of Chase Singletary in the heavyweight bout.
It didn't turn out that way. Jackson Striggow, a redshirt junior holding a 10-5 record, refused to bow to Moore's record and ranking.
Moore led 4-1 at the end of the first period, where Martin had led 13-4 the match prior, and McKenna led 13-2. The slower pace would foreshadow what was to come: a 12-5 decision, the team's only win without bonus points attached.
The win put Ohio State ahead by a point with one match to wrestle, the heavyweight battle between No. 7 Mason Parris and No. 17 Chase Singletary. Singletary won the previous meeting between the two first-year starters at the Michigan State Open back in November, but he couldn't make lightning strike twice, and the Buckeyes lost the meet by two points.
Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda
Ohio State had several opportunities to win the meet, from the first match to the last.
Malik Heinselman faced a tough test out of the gate in No. 13 Drew Mattin. As with his loss to Rayvon Foley earlier in the month, Heinselman showed that he is quick and talented, but not quite as strong as the top-ranked guys in the class at this stage.
Mattin answered everything Heinselman tried on offense, and had more than enough offense of his own to put the match out of reach late in the third.
In the second match of the night, Luke Pletcher faced No. 1 Stevan Micic in their fifth meeting over the past two years. Pletcher won their first meeting back at the 2017 Cliff Keen Invitational, but Micic won their subsequent dual-meet match and at the 2018 Big Ten tournament and NCAA Championships.
Micic did it again Friday night, getting Pletcher on the mat and then punishing him on top. Pletcher managed to keep himself from getting pinned or from giving up the tech, but Micic thoroughly dominated the match.
It's worth noting that Micic is a world-class talent, representing Serbia on its world freestyle team. Pletcher has shown that he can hang with Micic in the past, but it was all Micic this time.
After McKenna and Jordan pulled Ohio State back into content, Ohio State came into a match where it fielded the higher-ranked competitor in Ke-Shawn Hayes at 157 pounds, but walked away with a loss. No. 11 Alec Pantaleo kept with Hayes during a scoreless first period, but then hit a quick escape and a takedown in the second to get out to a 3-1 lead.
Hayes did a smart thing in the second, hanging on to Pantaleo long enough to get Pantaleo warned for stalling before getting the escape. But then in the third, trailing by a point, he failed to muster anything resembling a takedown attempt in the final 30 seconds of the match.
The stall call the home crowd wanted didn't come, and Pantaleo got the only upset of the night via a 3-2 decision. That loss marked a critical point in the meet, as Ohio State needed its ranked wrestlers to hold serve – and that very much included Hayes.
At 165 pounds, Kaleb Romero took a number of shots, but couldn't finish any, and No. 7 Logan Massa earned the 7-2 decision. Romero hasn't been able to get in the win column against a ranked opponent yet this season.
If Pletcher had held Micic to a decision, had Hayes won his match, had Romero pulled off the upset, or if Moore had gotten some much-needed bonus points, the dual might have finished very differently.
Bright Future Ahead...?
No. 20 Ethan Smith very much looked like he belonged in his match versus No. 2 Myles Amine at 174 pounds. Smith and Te'Shan Campbell have traded the starting spot all season long, but there is little question Smith is doing everything he can to be the last man standing.
The redshirt freshman is 12-4 on the season. He turned some heads with a ranked win over Wisconsin in December, but Buckeye head coach Tom Ryan has given Campbell, last year's starter, every opportunity to distinguish himself on the mat.
After the Michigan State dual, associate head coach J Jaggers said that neither man had really separated himself from the other yet, but there comes a point where going with the younger athlete with higher upside potential becomes the smarter long-term play. At this stage, Te'Shan Campbell is a known quantity: he is a physically strong athlete who can dominate from top position, but who can't seem to manage more than a couple of takedowns in a match.
Smith didn't get Amine on the mat in this match either, but he stood toe-to-toe with the No. 2 man in the country for seven minutes and was very much in contention to win the match right up until literally the last second.
| Wt | Results | OSU | UM |
|---|---|---|---|
| 125 | No. 13 Drew Mattin, decision over Malik Heinselman (12-6) | 0 | 3 |
| 133 | No. 1 Stevan Micic, major decision over No. 5 Luke Pletcher (14-1) | 0 | 7 |
| 141 | No.2 Joey McKenna, victory by TECH FALL over No. 5 Kanen Storr (18-3) | 5 | 7 |
| 149 | No. 3 Micah Jordan, major decision over Malik Amine (17-4) | 9 | 7 |
| 157 | No. 11 Alec Pantaleo, decision over No. 8 Ke-Shawn Hayes (3-2) | 9 | 10 |
| 165 | No. 7 Logan Massa, decision over Kaleb Romero (7-2) | 9 | 13 |
| 174 | No. 3 Myles Amine, decision over No. 20 Ethan Smith (3-2) | 9 | 16 |
| 184 | No. 1 Myles Martin, victory by TECH FALL over J.T. Correll (24-9) | 14 | 16 |
| 197 | No. 2 Kollin Moore, decision over Jackson Striggow (12-5) | 17 | 16 |
| HWT | No. 7 Mason Parris, decision over No. 17 Chase Singletary (6-3) | 17 | 19 |
It would be easy to focus on the heavyweight match, which literally gave Michigan the victory. Chase Singletary dropped the 6-3 decision to No. 7 Mason Parris in what was a highly-active match from the get-go to the final whistle.
Singletary found himself in a number of scrambles throughout the match, he took several shots he didn't finish and failed to hold off all of Parris' shot attempts. But, he showed that he can beat Parris at their last meeting, and he acquitted himself relatively well in the loss Friday night.
One area of concern is that Singletary weighed in fairly light; according to the Big Ten commentators, he stepped on the scales at 226 pounds. That's not far off where Kyle Snyder wrestled during his tenure, but Singletary has four inches of height on Snyder, and he needs to be heavier to compete with the top end of the class in the postseason.
As Jaggers said earlier in the month about Malik Heinselman, it's not how much the guy weighs so much as how strong he is for the weight, but in Singletary's case it bears watching over the next 55 days.
What's Next?
Ohio State has a couple of meets to lick its wounds and regroup ahead of its next major test versus Penn State.
The Buckeyes head to Champaign to face Illinois, Friday, Feb. 1 in another primetime match that will be televised on the Big Ten Network. They'll wrestle on Sunday afternoon, Feb. 3, in Evanston at Northwestern on BTN Plus.
Then it's back home to St. John Arena, to host No. 1 Penn State on Friday, Feb. 8 on BTN.
Tom Ryan and staff have plenty to work on over the next two weeks... and more importantly, over the weeks between now and the Big Ten Tournament.
