It was a tough weekend for the Northwestern wrestling team, which lost both dual meets this weekend at Welsh-Ryan Arena on Friday to No. 7 Minnesota and at No. 17 Michigan State.
The absence of sophomore Ryan Lang in both meets hurt the Wildcats. He pulled a muscle in his back on Friday, and junior John Velez, missed Sunday’s meet against Michigan State because of his injured shoulder.
“Anytime you have a starter out whether it’s Ryan or John Velez, it’s going to hurt,” NU coach Tim Cysewski said. “If you have two starters not in there it’s hard to recover when you’re wrestling high caliber teams like we are.”
The Cats started the weekend by dropping a home match to No. 7 Minnesota 28-7. NU began the match with a win by junior Matt Delguyd but went downhill from there. Freshman Dustin Fox, ranked No. 13 in the nation, lost a close match to No. 2 Cole Konrad, 1-0 and No. 11 Velez fell to Minnesota’s No. 4 Bobbe Lowe, 5-2.
Sophomore Dan Quintella was pinned at 133 pounds and after the Cats forfeited at 141 pounds because of Lang’s injury, freshman Greg Hagel and senior Mike Kimberlin lost tight matches which put the meet out of reach for NU.
“There are some things that could have been done (differently),” redshirt freshman Jake Herbert said. He then listed a series of close matches that could have propelled NU.
Herbert and freshman Mike Tamillow closed the meet off with wins.
Minnesota coach J Robinson said NU’s young squad impressed him.
“They’ve been doing a great job this year,” Robinson said. “They’ve got some really strong kids (but) Lang being out obviously hurt them. (NU) has taken some really big steps forward and I think in a couple years they’re going to be really tough.”
At Michigan State, the Cats registered five victories to start the match. Cysewski bumped almost all of his wrestlers up a weight class after Velez was unable to compete in the 125 pound division. Kimberlin, Herbert, Tamillow, Delguyd and Fox all won their matches to give NU a 15-0 lead, but the forfeit brought the score to 15-6.
Freshman Jordan Brown then lost wrestling up at 133 pounds and Quintella, Jimmy Kim and Hagel all lost wrestling in heavier weight classes than they are used to to give Michigan State the victory, 20-15.
Despite the two losses Cysewski said his team still felt confident because of the way they peformed without two stars and with having to wrestle in unfamiliar weight classes.
Cysewski bumped his wrestlers up to give his team a chance to win without Velez and Lang.
“It’s something you don’t want to do but every once in a while you have to,” Cysewski said. “Just because of the situation you have to cover yourself a little bit. We gave up some size because of that but we didn’t give up fight for it.”
Reach Paul Tenorio at [email protected].
