Northwestern had high hopes coming into its first duals meet of the season, despite not having its top four wrestlers from last season. Following Saturday’s matches, its expectations were brought back down to earth.
NU (1-2 overall) was beaten soundly 27-6 by Stanford and overwhelmed 33-7 by Purdue in Saturday’s season-opening matches at Welsh-Ryan Arena. Earlier the Wildcats managed to defeat Division II St. Cloud State 17-12 in their opening match.
“My reaction? Two words: not good,” coach Tim Cysewski said. “We’ve got a lot of inexperienced kids, and this week we didn’t make that jump that I expected from last week.”
To say the Cats had an off day would be an understatement. In their matches against Stanford and Purdue, NU managed only four individual wins out of a possible 18.
Sophomore John Schoen (197-pound weight class) defeated Stanford’s Richard Kessler 8-3 and sophomore Robert Kellogg (174) defeated Purdue’s Jason Martin 10-1, while junior Andrew Nadhir (149) posted wins of 12-6 over Stanford’s Michael Kent and 8-4 over Purdue’s Nick Bertucci. Many of the 14 losses, which does not include the Cats’ two forfeits in the 141-pound weight class, tended to be relatively one-sided.
“We were pretty bad, partially including myself,” Nadhir said. “There’s a lot of room for improvement.”
NU started off competitive in both matches, especially when it looked like freshman Levi Mele (125) was about to defeat Stanford’s Ryan Mango. Just as time was about to run out, Mango got Mele in a hold to gain two points and win 10-9. That came after heavyweight Ben Kuhar (285) dropped a close 3-1 decision to Stanford’s Dylan Rush. Suddenly down 6-0, the pressure heaped on the Cats as it became clear it was not going to be their day.
“I think the snowball effect rolled against us,” Cysewski said. “When the momentum is with you it’s great, but in our case it got worse. It looked like we were on the verge early on, but then we just fell behind.”
If anything highlighted the difference in NU’s roster between last year and this year, it was the reversal of fortune against Stanford. The Cats defeated the Cardinals 25-15 in Palo Alto, Calif., last year, only for the Cardinals to return the favor this time in Evanston.
“It’s disappointing,” Nadhir said. “But they were tough teams, and we are still maturing in a rebuilding year. (Stanford and Purdue) deserve credit.”
There were some signs of promise for NU. In addition to Nadhir, Kellogg and Schoen’s strong performances, true freshmen Mele and Marcus Shrewsbury (184) showed potential in close matches. But those encouraging performances could not hide NU’s frustration.
“I felt pretty good coming into the weekend and I thought the guys would wrestle well coming into the second week,” Cysewski said. “Duals put a little more pressure on the guys since everyone is watching and you’re playing for the team, so maybe that had something to do with it.”
Though it was a disappointing weekend for the Cats, they will look for their inexperienced wrestlers to continue catching up as they adjust to the steep learning curve of college wrestling. And don’t expect Cysewski – who held the team almost an hour after their last match – to allow the team’s future performances to mirror Saturday’s.
“We know how to wrestle,” Nadhir said. “It’s more mental – we have to have that attitude ‘I want to wrestle’. Inexperience isn’t an excuse; the guys didn’t show heart, and that’s not the way this team is. A lot of errors were made, but nothing that can’t be fixed. We’re going to bounce back.” [email protected]
