When the St. Louis Rams’ offense tore through the NFL in the late 1990s it was dubbed “The Greatest Show on Turf.” Now, after a win against then-No. 8 Iowa, the Northwestern wrestling team (9-1, 2-1 Big Ten) is being touted in posters across campus as “The Greatest Show in Welsh-Ryan.”
The posters have nicknames for the seven NU wrestlers who are ranked in the top 20 nationally, such as Mike “The Upset Special” Tamillow and Jake “The Invincible Man” Herbert.
Some of the wrestlers joked about their new nicknames.
Junior Matt Delguyd commented that his alias, “The Sicilian Shooter,” didn’t work because “I’m not even Sicilian.” Herbert laughed that sophomore Ryan Lang would be upset because Lang was “The Human Pretzel” and not “invincible.”
But despite all the kidding about the posters, the Wildcats remain focused for their match against No. 7 Minnesota (6-6, 0-2) on Friday in Welsh-Ryan Arena.
“We had a good victory last week against Iowa, but that’s old news now,” coach Tim Cysewski said. “Our most important match right now as a team is Minnesota because they’re a good team. We’re going to have our hands full this weekend.”
NU wrestlers will have five match-ups against individual opponents ranked in the top 10, including No. 13 Dustin Fox against Minnesota’s Cole Konrad, who is ranked second in the nation.
The billing for Konrad doesn’t faze Fox, who jumped into the rankings after being dropped because of a long absence due to mononucleosis.
“Ratings don’t really matter, and I just have to go out there and get it done,” Fox said. “I think I’m pretty close to him. I guess we’ll see.”
NU coaches and wrestlers said they hoped the crowd that supported them throughout the Iowa match will be back for the Minnesota dual.
“We need them,” Cysewski said. “Tough matches like this, we need everybody there being as crazy as they were last time, if not more so. When you wrestle hard you get tired a little bit. You hear people going crazy in the stands, that gives you a little bit more ‘umph’ that you need to get tougher in those tough situations.”
After the dual against Minnesota the Cats will travel to Michigan State to face the Spartans in East Lansing, Mich. The Spartans, ranked 17th in the nation, defeated Minnesota earlier this year.
This will be the first time this year the Cats face two ranked opponents back-to-back on the same weekend.
“That’s what the Big Ten is all about, they’re all tough,” Herbert said. “We know that Minnesota is better than Iowa and that every team we wrestle is just as tough, so we just continue doing what we need to do. One win (against a ranked team) is not good enough.”
Reach Paul Tenorio at [email protected].
