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Southern Scuffle

Looked that guy up. He's solid, 3x state champ in ID, decent win/lose record, took a 2 year mission, so he graduated in 2014. Witcraft got his leg caught on the takedown which led to the 4 pt turn. It happens.

Bigger picture though...Witcraft is still only 18 and has some impressive skills. Both John & Chris have said they are trying to get him to trust his conditioning more and it's showing. He's finding his 2nd wind now and is the more aggressive wrestler right till the end. A lot of upside to him.
I agree Witcraft has lots of potential but he did not show very much in this match. Part of my reaction is watching a few of Penn. St freshmen that are in this tournament Lee, Starocci and Beard. At this time their young guys are so much better than ours. Hopefully that is the position we are in next year. Did anyone watch Bremaceda's last match against NDSU Van Mannen. Bremaceda was arguing with the ref and his opponent. Van Mannen was killing him in a leg ride and Bremaceda was complaining that his opponent was wrestling dirty. Also he argued with ref about injuries showing his hand and I think he was saying he was grabbing my fingers. Maybe he was but I wish Bremaceda would just wrestle. Also big match in the consolation semi's between Whittlake and Lee coming up.
 
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Geer chances of AA'ing at 197 is pretty slim IMO. Effort is there.... Just doesn't have the strength right now IMO.
 
Whittlake won 8 to 4. He lost the first half of the match but then dominated the second half of the match. Very good win for Whittlake. I also saw Hone dominated his match.
Whenever there is good soon expect bad and that just happened. Geer got soundly beat by Beard and Montalvo got beat by Waddell. We may lose a team point because at the end of Montalvo match he seemed to punch his opponent. I just turned to that match and so I don't know what happened that Montalvo responded that way. Again Geer should go to 84.
 
Geer chances of AA'ing at 197 is pretty slim IMO. Effort is there.... Just doesn't have the strength right now IMO.

Yeah he needs to go 184. He kept getting in on the guy, but couldn’t ever finish because he was undersized.
 
Yea. Sheets has shown well and has really improved this year but obviously he is not in that class.
Hidlay is a stud and ranked #1 for a reason. I was impressed that Sheets got in on a couple shots, some good counter positions will need better finishes against guys like that, but he should have learned a lot from that match.
 
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I agree Witcraft has lots of potential but he did not show very much in this match. Part of my reaction is watching a few of Penn. St freshmen that are in this tournament Lee, Starocci and Beard. At this time their young guys are so much better than ours. Hopefully that is the position we are in next year. Did anyone watch Bremaceda's last match against NDSU Van Mannen. Bremaceda was arguing with the ref and his opponent. Van Mannen was killing him in a leg ride and Bremaceda was complaining that his opponent was wrestling dirty. Also he argued with ref about injuries showing his hand and I think he was saying he was grabbing my fingers. Maybe he was but I wish Bremaceda would just wrestle. Also big match in the consolation semi's between Whittlake and Lee coming up.

Not really fair to compare Witcraft to Lee, Starocci and Beard. Beard and Starocci were ranked a lot higher as prospects and Beard and Lee are a year older. Those three should be further along than Witcraft at this point. If your expectations are Witcraft should be at their level this early in his career I think your expectations for the kid are way out of whack.
 
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Not really fair to compare Witcraft to Lee, Starocci and Beard. Beard and Starocci were ranked a lot higher as prospects and Beard and Lee are a year older. Those three should be further along than Witcraft at this point. If your expectations are Witcraft should be at their level this early in his career I think your expectations for the kid are way out of whack.
No I was talking about our young wrestlers and their young wrestlers. But you are right until 2020 we did not recruit anything like Penn. St. Whitlake is now showing something and I think that Witcraft is showing something but the others I don't think so. But wrestlers can jump levels when they are young especially so who knows.
 
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No I was talking about our young wrestlers and their young wrestlers. But you are right until 2020 we did not recruit anything like Penn. St. Whitlake is now showing something and I think that Witcraft is showing something but the others I don't think so. But wrestlers can jump levels when they are young especially so who knows.

Balmeceda ended up falling a decent bit in a lot of the recruiting rankings. I think we are seeing why. I think he shows some good skills but he does have a long way to go.
 
Not really fair to compare Witcraft to Lee, Starocci and Beard. Beard and Starocci were ranked a lot higher as prospects and Beard and Lee are a year older. Those three should be further along than Witcraft at this point. If your expectations are Witcraft should be at their level this early in his career I think your expectations for the kid are way out of whack.

I believe Lee also wrestled at Penn State's RTC during his senior year of HS. Sort of like a pre-grayshirt. So he's actually got 2 years on Witcraft.

Harley, hang in there, the big guns are coming. Daton is back next year, along with Ferrari, Plott & the rest of the gang of 8. Witcraft is getting the experience you described when correctly advocating the coaches start him this year. He'll be a lot better because of it.
 
Montalvo got beat by Waddell. We may lose a team point because at the end of Montalvo match he seemed to punch his opponent. I just turned to that match and so I don't know what happened that Montalvo responded that way.

Completely deserved. Waddell pulled an Anthony Ashnault maneuver and clubbed Montalvo on a restart with 1 second remaining in the match. It's a punk move. I get the sense Montalvo is not someone people want to mess with.
 
Completely deserved. Waddell pulled an Anthony Ashnault maneuver and clubbed Montalvo on a restart with 1 second remaining in the match. It's a punk move. I get the sense Montalvo is not someone people want to mess with.
Doesn’t surprise me he’s a former Gooner after all. Was hot garbage there so he transferred.
 
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Sheets takes 3rd place with a well wrestled 3-1 decision. Gfeller and Real Woods are the last match of the night. They started at 149.
Oberebo, it looks like Whitlake has jumped a level because he easily beat Bullard of NCSU and took 3rd. You can see how much his confidence has improved on his feet and got a reversal against Bullard and road his opponent hard. I hope he keeps progressing as the year goes on. Sheets seems to improved a lot especially since he got majored by Drexel earlier in the year.
 
Wittlake with an impressive performance for third. He looked damn good this week and beat some solid guys.
I may be critical of Witlake again as it seemed to inspire his wrestling. He looked great the whole tournament and beat a very solid Thomas Bullard of NC State with I believe 3 takedowns and a reverse. I will be revising my opinion of his wrestling based on this tournament.
 
Gfeller makes an unfortunate mistake and it cost him. Gfeller was dog whipped most of the match!! Real Woods is a quality wrestler though!!
 
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Gfeller makes an unfortunate mistake and it cost him. Gfeller was dog whipped most of the match!! Real Woods is a quality wrestler though!!

I’m hoping G’s ankle was still hurt because that was a very flat and uninspired performance.

Hone beats Shoop 3-1 for 3rd.
 
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This was G's first action of the season, so he obviously wasn't at his best. But a case could be made that Dusty Hone had the better tournament. Had the better win (Wilson) and the better (more competitive) loss (Woods).

I hope the coaches don't rely solely on ranking matches. Seems like your performance outside the room is more important than 1 matchup inside it. I'd like to see them go to another tournament or alternate matches.
 
I'm curious if G looked good physically. Does he look sucked? Tough to open with a 2 day tournament, but it's a good way to wrestle your way into shape. I think some of those funky things Gfeller does would have been a lot more fun in the 70's, before you could scout every match your opponent wrestles. I listened to only about an hour of the entire tournament.
 
Sounds like a high-class problem at 141, but G just getting back from injury and hobbling around to take second tells me there is more upside. Glad Hone is the real deal. Glad he is there and competitive and may be the solution.
 
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I'm curious if G looked good physically. Does he look sucked? Tough to open with a 2 day tournament, but it's a good way to wrestle your way into shape. I think some of those funky things Gfeller does would have been a lot more fun in the 70's, before you could scout every match your opponent wrestles. I listened to only about an hour of the entire tournament.

He looked noticeably thinner to me, but his stamina seemed OK. I do think he needs something else on bottom though. Woods was ready for that roll and shut it down.
 
He looked noticeably thinner to me, but his stamina seemed OK. I do think he needs something else on bottom though. Woods was ready for that roll and shut it down.
I think the ankle bothered him more than we thought. I have not gone back and watched but I don't remember him going low and shooting many takedowns. He did not look like he cut too much weight to me.
 
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G looked tentative to me, much like Boo did in his first few matches back. Sheets has stepped up his offense and looks a bit quicker to me, but he still gets caught flat-footed at times. Wittlake seems to be gaining confidence and had some very good matches. Hone did beat Wilson, but so did a couple of other people. Wilson could barely drag himself off the mat after his match with Dusty. Didn’t hear anything definite about why Joe defaulted, but there were a couple of interesting rumors. Geer is just too small for 197, especially since they are holding him within striking distance of 184. As usual, most of our guys looked smaller than most of their opponents, at least to me. This was our third time to attend the Scuffle and this was the smallest crowd by far.
 
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