Brandon Precin might be able to beat any wrestler in the country, except Angel Escobedo.
Coming off 21 consecutive victories, Precin, ranked third at 125 pounds, was matched up against Indiana’s Escobedo, who is currently ranked fifth but won an NCAA title last season. Precin suffered three of his five defeats last year against Escobedo, one of them in a double-overtime match in the NCAA quarterfinals.
“He keeps coming so close to him every time he wrestles, and he keeps working hard,” coach Tim Cysewski said. “He’ll get him.”
Following a trend the rest of the No. 16 Wildcats followed in their 23-11 home loss to the No. 20 Hoosiers on Sunday, Precin fought hard but lost 3-1 in overtime.
“There were some close matches and we lost them,” Cysewski said. “I don’t know why. But we looked a little flat.”
Precin’s record is now 23-2. Both of his losses have come in overtime against former national champions.
Several matches could have gone either way. For example, at 174 pounds Robert Kellogg was tied with No. 15 Trevor Perry going into the third period, but lost 9-6.
However, NU’s three victories had a flair for the dramatic. Despite battling a cold, 149-pounder Andrew Nadhir won his match 5-2 in a tiebreaker period after he and Nick Walpole ended double overtime tied at two. Not surprisingly, the deciding factor was exhaustion.
“He was more tired at the end than I was and I was able to capitalize on that in overtime,” Nadhir said.
Keith Sulzer, ranked 16th at 141 pounds, won his match 4-3 with a third period reversal to snatch the lead from his opponent, Andrae Hernandez, as the clock wound down.
No. 1 Jake Herbert improved to 24-0 at 184 pounds with a 20-5 victory over Seth Parker, winning by technical fall.
“I got him on his back, put him in a few holds, put him in some pain, but he didn’t give up,” Herbert said. “He fought hard off his back but he didn’t really fight for anything else.”
