Wrestling BIG TEN TOURNEY THREAD

[Lex Knapp]

Going on hour thirteen inside the RAC. It has been one heck of a day. Great wrestling and great atmosphere.

Still another round of consi's coming up in the 9th place brackets. Nic Aguilar will be wrestling on mat 4 in two matches.

 

[ruready07]

Aguilar will need an at large bid.,....I think he has the resume...

is this the next stage in our program development ? Freshman with enough talent to qualify for NCAA’s .

I believe it’s a good program expectation and raises the bar an appropriate amount for NJ’s wrestling program

 

[Lex Knapp]

Just for those not familiar with how all of this works: any bracket that has 8 automatic bids must wrestle to 9th place, so there’s an alternate if one of the 8 qualifiers gets hurt.

That is why Aguilar will be wrestling again

 

[Lex Knapp]

is this the next stage in our program development ? Freshman with enough talent to qualify for NCAA’s .

I believe it’s a good program expectation and raises the bar an appropriate amount for NJ’s wrestling program

Development is everything. Plenty of great recruits have come through this program and didn’t develop.

 

[FoxRU]

Development is everything. Plenty of great recruits have come through this program and didn’t develop.

What are you saying here?

 

[Lex Knapp]

Nic Aguilar now wrestling on mat 4 against Brandon Meredith of PSU.

Aragona on deck mat 3

 

[Lex Knapp]

What are you saying here?

That there have been great recruits, who looked like they could be potential AA’s, and came up short. I think that is a thing of the past, for the most part. But guys such as Scott Winston and Mario Mason were blue chip recruits who did not develop. These schools who have multiple AA’s, national champs achieve that through development. There is a core of young talent here with a ton of potential, and they must develop in order to reach the goals the fans, coaches and wrestlers expect.

 

[Lex Knapp]

Aguilar down 2-1 in the second period. He starts on bottom and escapes to tie the match at 2-2

 

[Lex Knapp]

Aragona up 2-0 over on mat 3

 

[Lex Knapp]

Aguilar on top to start the third period against Meredith. They are tied at 2

 

[Lex Knapp]

Aragona still leading 2-0, starting the second period on bottom.

 

[Lex Knapp]

Aguilar guts out a 4-3 win over Meredith to advance in the 9th place bracket

 

[Lex Knapp]

Aragona up 5-0 in the third period

 

[Lex Knapp]

Aragona picks up the 5-1 victory in the 9th place bracket

 

[Clearscreen25]

THanks for all the hard work and great updates all day Lex!!!!

 

[Lex Knapp]

THanks for all the hard work and great updates all day Lex!!!!

Always my pleasure! That’ll wrap up day 1.

Back at it at noon tomorrow!

 

[ruready07]

Development is everything. Plenty of great recruits have come through this program and didn’t develop.

Agree. development is a combination of 3 things :

1) the wrestler himself
2) the program culturally
3) certain program attributes (facilities, training partners, etc)

 

[pawrestlersintn]

Just for those not familiar with how all of this works: any bracket that has 8 automatic bids must wrestle to 9th place, so there’s an alternate if one of the 8 qualifiers gets hurt.

That is why Aguilar will be wrestling again

Lex, that is not why they wrestle for a ninth place. One of the criteria for an "at-large" bid is finishing one spot away from an auto-qualifying spot.

 

[koleszar]

Just got home, boy not a lot to cheer about today. So we have 1 in and are hoping for what, 2 more at large. Sitting in 12th place with a paltry 24.5 pts through two sessions, my gosh that's just down right bad.

Forget about Pagano wrestling again, heard he broke his hand in practice. This has been a season from hell, No more Nick, Colucci goes down, Grello goes down, Angelo done with concussion and finally the guy who was wrestling the best Pagano, breaks his hand right before the tournament. This will be a season to forget.

 

[FoxRU]

What are you saying here?

That there have been great recruits, who looked like they could be potential AA’s, and came up short. I think that is a thing of the past, for the most part. But guys such as Scott Winston and Mario Mason were blue chip recruits who did not develop. These schools who have multiple AA’s, national champs achieve that through development. There is a core of young talent here with a ton of potential, and they must develop in order to reach the goals the fans, coaches and wrestlers expect.

Not sure those are the best examples. Winston was injured throughout his career and Mason flames out at Minnesota before coming to RU. Yes, there have been several kids who haven’t reached their potential but the averages aren’t worse than other schools and I would argue that guys like Theobold, Gravina and JVB exceeded expectations. I guess my point is what was the point of your post? Are you saying that the staff isn’t developing the kids that come in? If so, as a former wrestler, is this the right venue for that critique? And, is it even accurate? You obviously have access to the staff. Why not discuss it with them rather than posting it here. Maybe I have misunderstood your post. Hence my request for you to clarify. Sorry if I am reading it wrong. Just seems unnecessarily negative to me.

 

[Lex Knapp]

Not sure those are the best examples. Winston was injured throughout his career and Mason flames out at Minnesota before coming to RU. Yes, there have been several kids who haven’t reached their potential but the averages aren’t worse than other schools and I would argue that guys like Theobold, Gravina and JVB exceeded expectations. I guess my point is what was the point of your post? Are you saying that the staff isn’t developing the kids that come in? If so, as a former wrestler, is this the right venue for that critique? And, is it even accurate? You obviously have access to the staff. Why not discuss it with them rather than posting it here. Maybe I have misunderstood your post. Hence my request for you to clarify. Sorry if I am reading it wrong. Just seems unnecessarily negative to me.

I think you are reading it a little differently than what I meant by it. I didn’t mean it as kids don’t develop at Rutgers. And as I said before, I believe that is a thing of the past. Our coaches have done a great job with elevating talent, but like any school, there are kids who fall short. And when that does happen, it is usually more-so on the athlete than the coach. My point probably could have been worded differently, but it was more about the fact that development is the key to success, and that there is a lot of talent to develop here. There have been examples of wrestlers falling short and not reaching their potential, and this is a young core that Rutgers cannot afford to have that happen to.

 

[MS-RU]

Rutgers will be at a major crossroads these next few years with the caliber and depth of recruits it's bringing in between Alvarez, Aragona, Vulkah, Kanniard, Turley, Poz, O'Neill, Shawver, Hamilton, Olivieri, etc... all of which were state/national champs and highly ranked national recruits.

If in 3-4 years we don't have multiple AAs and guys legitimately competing for B1G/NCAA championships, Goodale and co are going to find themselves in a very bad spot once again. The talks of RU not being able to develop guys will be back and be 100x worse than they were in the past, given the depth of talent we've never had before. I'm not sure if they can survive that. With this much depth, it obviously gives the coaches a little more leeway and they don't have to bat 1000% as long as some/most of the guys make it to the next level and are successful. If they can't get it done over next 3-4 years, I'm not sure they have what it takes to build elite program-wide success to get to the level of team trophies and championships.

There are no more excuses about facilities or institutional support, they have what they need to get there so its its time to put up or go home.

 

[Leonard23]

Nick Suriano and his dad were at The RAC last night and Nick was on the floor. Hopefully, it's the start of mending fences and a good sign.

 

[MS-RU]

Nick Suriano and his dad were at The RAC last night and Nick was on the floor. Hopefully, it's the start of mending fences and a good sign.

:Pray: :Praying:

 

[koleszar]

Funny story from yesterday. Correnti comes walking up to our section sits two rows in front of me in some open seats. Usher comes up and proceeds to kick him out. As he's being escorted out one of our fans yells, hey dumbass he's on our team how about you cut him some slack. Usher turns around mumbles something and the guys in front of me start letting him have it. I must say I joined in on the fun as well.

I don't know about you guys, but I have friends scattered through out the arena and even I was going over to them, finding some open seats and chatting for a little while. Illegal by Rutgers definition yea sure, but in the world of common sense completely harmless during this 14 hr. marathon.

 

[RUTrack94]

We knew the team was young and it was going to be a down year ... still finished 10-7 even with the bad string of injuries, and that includes 2 close home losses.

Sure we’ll see a huge level of improvement in the freshmen as they now understand the level of competition and have time to reflect. If Nick comes back, they’ll see firsthand the work effort of an NCAA Champion!

 

[IsItLuck]

Great environment. Penn State fans travel well and are great wrestling fans in general.

I was surprised by the quietness of the Iowa fanbase, but I understand how far Rutgers is.

The Minnesota fan base (parents)...they are...intense.

 

[LETSGORU91]

Great day of competition yesterday and cant wait to see what today brings for us. It was great interacting with all the different fans in the arena and at our watering hole in between sessions. On a side note, back when tickets were being offered for sale, I think there was a PSU fan complaining about the allocation of tickets and how they were getting shut out. From what I saw on the opposite side, PSU fans dominated the entire upper middle sections and just about a perfect T across the top sections. Very impressive. Either they scooped up just about every available free ticket (over NJ/RU fans) or their allocations were pretty damn good as evidenced by the T formation.

 

[SCNJ]

Great day of competition yesterday and cant wait to see what today brings for us. It was great interacting with all the different fans in the arena and at our watering hole in between sessions. On a side note, back when tickets were being offered for sale, I think there was a PSU fan complaining about the allocation of tickets and how they were getting shut out. From what I saw on the opposite side, PSU fans dominated the entire upper middle sections and just about a perfect T across the top sections. Very impressive. Either they scooped up just about every available free ticket (over NJ/RU fans) or their allocations were pretty damn good as evidenced by the T formation.

There were Penn State fans buying Rutgers season tickets just to get priority access to the tournament. Don’t let them fool you.

I don’t have tickets but I’m sure Rutgers has done a great job hosting and I’m willing to bet every fan base will compliment the school for hosting except for one.