Northwestern routed winless Southern Illinois-Edwardsville 28-15 Friday by winning all but one weight class. Two days later, No. 11 Indiana did the same by steamrolling the Wildcats 31-9 in their Big Ten opener.
The Cats’ (5-7-1, 0-1 Big Ten) conference opener gave them a first taste of what is typically a brutal Big Ten schedule. Indiana (12-1, 1-1), who lost to No. 19 Wisconsin on Friday, sandwiched NU with the top 125-pound wrestler and second best heavyweight wrestler in the nation.
‘Any time it helps our confidence that’s great [playing SIU-Edwardsville],’ coach Tim Cysewski said . ‘But we have to raise our intensity for a Big Ten opponent, when that intensity may not be there against a lesser team.’ I told the guys after the match on Friday that we couldn’t rest on our laurels.’
The scoreline from the match against SIU-Edwardsville (0-11) was misleading because the Cats won every weight class except for heavyweight. The squad forfeited the 125- and 141-pound weight classes, giving away 12 points.’
Indiana was a different story. Hoosiers senior Angel Escobedo (125) pinned freshman Levi Mele in the first match to give Indiana a 6-0 lead out of the start. Senior Eric Metzler (133) then won his match 7-4 over Indiana’s Matt Ortega’ to pull NU back into the dual.
‘It was nice to set the pace in second matchup and get points on the board,’ Metzler said. ‘Hopefully it’ll set the tone for the rest of the guys. At this time of year every Big Ten match is important–it’s important for the Big Ten tournament and national qualifiers.’
Junior Andrew Nadhir (149) won 7-4 over Indiana’s Matt Coughlin in the next bout, though Nadhir and Metzler’s six combined points were offset by NU’s forfeit in the 141-pound division.
Despite being down only 12-6, the dual suddenly began to fall apart for NU. After Indiana’s Kurt Kinser pinned NU freshman Kevin Bialka (157) , redshirt sophomore Robert Kellogg (165) lost 10-4, junior Aaron Jones (184) fell 5-2, and sophomore John Schoen (197) dropped a 7-1 decision. Marcus Shrewsbury (285), wrestling up from his normal 184-pound weight class, was no match for Indiana’s Nate Everhart , who shutout the freshman 12-0.
‘I thought going in we had good chance to win four or five matchups, but we had to wrestle well to get that done,’ Cysewski said. ‘We came up short in the 184 and 197, which I thought we could have won.’
NU’s one bright spot among the string of losses was redshirt freshman Brian Roddy Jr. (174), who continued his strong run by winning a 6-4 decision against Indiana’s Trevor Perry . Roddy, who had only wrestled in one dual prior to last weekend’s Lone Star Tournament, improved his duals record to 5-1 this season.
‘I knew it was going to be a battle,’ Roddy said. ‘College wrestling is a funny sport because if you make one mistake the match can take a whole different swing. I knew I was going to have to be on my ‘A’ game to win it.’
Though Cysewski said he was ambivalent about the Cats’ performance against the Hoosiers, he was pleased with their final nonconference dual of the season two days earlier. Against SIU-Edwardsville, all but one of the Cats’ wins was a four-point major decision or five-point technical fall. Then again, the winless Cougars had previously gone 0-4 against other Big Ten opponents, failing to score a single point against any of them.
Sunday’s loss puts the Cats off to a losing start in Big Ten play, though they can get to .500 when Illinois visits Welsh-Ryan Arena on Sunday.’
‘We’ll build from this, we saw some good things today, ‘ Cysewski said. ‘We need everybody to wrestle their best next week.’ [email protected]
