Wrestling at Nationals

Eight Cornellians are in OK City for Nationals starting today.

Cornell release here: [cornellbigred.collegesports.com]

Live match results here: [www.ncaasports.com]

TV coverage starts at 11AM tomorrow on ESPNU.

Nickerson, Dickey, Mazzurco, and Rinaldi won their first matches. Mormile, Manotti, Anceravage, and Miracola did not.

Troy pinned his QF opponent in the second period and will face the #1 seed in the semis tonight (televised at 7pm on one of the ESPN stations).

Mazzurco loses his QF, but Rinaldi avenges earlier loss by beating Kyle Cerminara of Buffalo to advance to semis.

Third period reversal gives #5 Troy Nickerson a berth in the finals against #3 Joe Dubuque of Indiana.

I flipped back and forth between the Cornell PP and Rinaldi's SF match at 197. Rinaldi was passive and sorta lackluster. Badly outwrestled in the semis. Still, making it to SF guarantees All-American status, so kudos to him.

Manotti won his 5th round wrestleback match as well, so Cornell still has three wrestlers alive, though only one has a chance at a championship.

ugarte
I flipped back and forth between the Cornell PP and Rinaldi's SF match at 197. Rinaldi was passive and sorta lackluster. Badly outwrestled in the semis. Still, making it to SF guarantees All-American status, so kudos to him.

Manotti won his 5th round wrestleback match as well, so Cornell still has three wrestlers alive, though only one has a chance at a championship.

Manotti and Mazzurco both won consolation round 6 matches, and Rinaldi will now go into the consolations. Along with Nickerson, that makes four still wrestling, all of whom will be All-Americans (I believe).

Someone on Wrestling Report posted team scores after the second day: Cornell is sixth with 54 points...ahead of Penn State with 53.5 and Michigan with 52, but behind OSU (106), Minnesota (72.5), Oklahoma (64.5), Iowa (61.5), and Arizona State (56). Haven't calculated the number of wrestlers still alive for the teams just above and below Cornell.

I don't know what happened to Manotti when he got crunched in his opening match. He just finished his rampage through the wrestlebacks by demolishing the #1 seed, Trent Paulson of Iowa State, 8-1, to take third place.

Thanks for the update, Al!

Cornell All-American finishes:

157: Dustin Manotti (Senior, 7 seed) finished in 3rd - 4 time All-American!
184: Joe Mazzurco (Senior, 4 seed) finished in 6th - 2 time All-American!
197: Jerry Rinaldi (Junior, 7 seed) finished in 4th

Freshman Troy Nickerson wrestles for the Championship at 125 this evening. Good luck, Troy.

Congratulations to all of the Cornell All-Americans and all of Cornell's NCAA qualifiers.

And one more congratulations, to Rob Koll for putting together another excellent squad.

Anyone know what time the finals start?

7:30 est on espn

Al DeFlorio
I don't know what happened to Manotti when he got crunched in his opening match. He just finished his rampage through the wrestlebacks by demolishing the #1 seed, Trent Paulson of Iowa State, 8-1, to take third place.

In his sojourn through the wrestlebacks, Manotti knocked off the #9, #8, #4, #3, and #1 seeds. This borders on the unbelievable. I guess he was just royally pissed.

Al DeFlorio

Al DeFlorio
I don't know what happened to Manotti when he got crunched in his opening match. He just finished his rampage through the wrestlebacks by demolishing the #1 seed, Trent Paulson of Iowa State, 8-1, to take third place.

In his sojourn through the wrestlebacks, Manotti knocked off the #9, #8, #4, #3, and #1 seeds. This borders on the unbelievable. I guess he was just royally pissed.

I saw that but, due to problems with my wireless, kept losing my connection before I could post it. Pretty frickin' awesome. I still can't believe he lost (badly!) in the first round to an unseeded wrestler that didn't (IIRC) make it through the third round of wrestlebacks.

Indiana's Joe Dubuque beats Troy Nickerson 8-3 in the championship match. Still, a great effort this tournament by Nickerson.

All told, 1 second place, 1 third, 1 fourth and 1 sixth. And two of those guys are coming back next year.

And the awesome final team standings:

1 	Oklahoma St.	122.5	 
2 	Minnesota	84.0	 
3 	Oklahoma	80.5	 
4 	Iowa    	70.0	 
5	Cornell         62.0

ugarte
Indiana's Joe Dubuque beats Troy Nickerson 8-3 in the championship match. Still, a great effort this tournament by Nickerson.

All told, 1 second place, 1 third, 1 fourth and 1 sixth. And two of those guys are coming back next year.

And the awesome final team standings:

1 	Oklahoma St.	122.5	 
2 	Minnesota	84.0	 
3 	Oklahoma	80.5	 
4 	Iowa    	70.0	 
5	Cornell         62.0

That is Oklahoma State's 4th championship in a row. They are pretty good.

The wrestling team picks up a steal from Lehigh's recruiting class from this year.

[www.dailyrecord.com]

Grey only lost twice in high school, and if I remember correctly both of those losses occured in the Beast of the East tournament. He will be starting in 2007

Very nice pickup...but it sounds like a curious story.

Frey & Grey at 133?

ithacat
Frey & Grey at 133?

When I saw Grey wrestle 2 years ago he was pretty small. He may be able to get down to 125, but he also may have grown since then and not have a chance of doing that. I think the story is pretty curious too. Delbarton does have a bit of a Cornell connection though, John Cholish who graduated in '06 was a delbarton kid. (I wrestled in morris county NJ, thats how I know about these kids)

Lots of talk on this Lehigh forum: [wrestlingreport.com]

Regarding his wrestling weight, here's the Lehigh coach quoted in an Intermat article: “It’s one of those things that we’d never recruited Mike to be a 125 pounder,” said Strobel. “It’s about getting him bigger and stronger instead of being a weight-cutter. With the weight program we were going to put him on, I really saw him in a couple years being a 141-pounder.”

My impression* from the article is that he didn't want to sit behind Nickerson After being assured that he wouldn't wrestle in Nickerson's weight class he opted for Cornell.

* Read: rank speculation

Early 2006-7 rankings: [www.wrestlingreport.com]

Minnesota #1? Now that just sucks.

Jeff Hopkins '82
Minnesota #1? Now that just sucks.

And their home site mats are probably wider.

Jeff Hopkins '82
Minnesota #1? Now that just sucks...

I beg to differ, #22 just sucks.

billhoward
And their home site mats are probably wider.

Nice.