Josh Ballard sat in Indiana’s University Gymnasium on Friday night, hoping for a win.
Ballard and the Northwestern wrestling team were winless in the Big Ten, and the junior knew the Hoosiers would be his — and the team’s — best chance for the elusive victory. Indiana also was winless in the conference, and it was the last unranked foe NU would meet before the Big Ten Championships.
In the end, the Wildcats fell to Indiana 28-9, but Ballard did get the Big Ten win he wanted, defeating Matt Cooper at 149 pounds.
“It’s nice to get a win finally — it’s been awhile for me,” he said. “I’ve been on a little down slide, but now I’d like to improve on it.”
Ballard set off a three-match win streak for NU, as sophomore Mike Kimberlin and Jason Erwinski picked up wins for the Cats. The streak gave the Cats hope — it brought them from 10-0 to 10-9.
“Going into it, I felt confident that we would come out with a win,” NU coach Tim Cysewski said. “Different people are stepping up every week — we’re not in sync yet.”
But Indiana put the skids on NU’s hope for victory as it shut out the Cats in the final four matches.
“It bothers me when we lose anything,” Cysewski said. “But I go into every weekend knowing that we prepared our guys to win dual meets, and now they just have to go out there with the confidence to do that.”
John Velez at 125 and Jon Ott at 133 fell short in their matches, falling to their Hoosiers counterparts. Senior John Giacche looked like he was game to score points for NU, as he held No. 6 Coyte Cooper to a scoreless match until the end of the third period. But Cooper lived up to his ranking and scored a breakaway and a takedown in the last minutes to notch the win.
“It’s just frustrating to lose a match like that,” Giacche said.
Kimberlin’s and Erwinski’s wins were nothing out of the ordinary for the Cats. Kimberlin leads the team with 24 wins, and Erwinski is tied for second with Giacche and freshman Matt Delguyd with 19 wins.
“We need to get some more kids wrestling more consistently like Kimberlin and Jason,” Cysewski said.
NU went into the meet knowing it was starting a match down, as it had to forfeit the heavyweight class for the second week in a row due to injury and sickness. Cysewski said there haven’t been any definite plans to fill the heavyweight slot, but he has been working with sophomore Matt Repchak in case freshman Scott Johnson is still too ill with mononucleosis to compete in the Big Ten Championships.
“Matt’s really excited about going out there and wrestling, but we have to get him in shape to do that,” Cysewski said. “We’d sure like to get him in against these guys, just so he has a taste of what wrestling is like at this level.”
The Cats will be back in action this weekend when they take on No. 5 Ohio State on Friday and No. 2 Iowa on Sunday in Evanston. These are the last two duals for the Cats before their true test comes at the Big Ten Championships. Cysewski said these last meets are critical to fix any nagging problems.
“Each guy has to look himself in the mirror and say, ‘Am I doing everything I can to succeed?'” he said.
