No. 24 wrestling wins first dual meet of season at home against Utah Valley 27-9.
Wrestling won its first of three weekend dual meets of the season against Utah Valley on Friday, 27-9.
The team went to Eastern Michigan where it beat Drexel 29-10 and lost to No. 11 Oregon State, 22-13.
Head coach Tom Borrelli said what really stood out to him over the course of the meet was the great stamina his wrestlers displayed.
“I was pretty happy with our performance,” Borrelli said. “The biggest thing that stood out to me was I thought our conditioning was good. That is something you try to evaluate as a coach is where you are conditioning wise.”
Prior to the start of the meet, Ben Bennett was recognized for his accomplishment as being the only four-time All-American in program history. He is now an assistant coach with the team.
The Chippewas were able to take a 6-0 lead before the meet even started, as Utah Valley forfeited at the 174-pound weight class. Junior Mike Ottinger would have competed for CMU in that weight class.
Junior Dakota Cooley started out strong for the Chippewas in the 157-pound weight class. He won by decision 5-4, increasing the lead for CMU 9-0.
Freshman Nick Becker competed at 165 pounds and won by decision 6-4, pushing the lead to 12-0.
Borrelli said he felt like Becker and Cooley were the most tentative, having not wrestled in many dual meets.
“The first couple matches we had two guys wrestle who don’t have a lot of experience in dual meets yet – Dakota Cooley and Nick Becker,” Borrelli said. “They were probably the two that had the hardest time controlling their anxiety a little bit.”
The lead would be 15-0 after senior Craig Kelliher won by decision 7-6 in the 184-pound weight class.
Borrelli said, although Kelliher won his match, the injury he suffered during the match appeared to slow him down a little bit.
“Craig got into a bad situation and got hurt,” he said. “That took him out of his match a little bit after the injury timeout. That was tough on Craig to come back from that.”
At 197 pounds, sophomore Jackson Lewis won another match by a 3-1 decision in which he scored two points on a takedown in the third period.
After the win by Lewis, the Chippewas lead 18-0.
The only loss of the day for CMU came in the 285-pound weight class. Sophomore Adam Robinson was pinned in the first period, giving Utah Valley six points, closing the lead 18-6.
Borrelli said other than at the heavyweight class, he felt like the team was very competitive and gave themselves a chance to win.
"At heavyweight we didn’t really get a chance to wrestle long enough to see if we could be competitive,” Borrelli said. “Other than the heavyweight match, I felt we were competitive in every match.”
Although most of the early matches were close, the final four matches were not. CMU would outscore Utah Valley 28-7 in dual match points.
The final four matches were all won by decision, highlighted by freshman Corey Keener (125-pounds) defeating No. 12 Jade Rauser 8-4, pushing the CMU lead to 21-6.
Borrelli said he was happy with the way in which every lightweight wrestler fought.
“I was really impressed with all of our lightweights,” he said. “I felt like Corey (Keener), Tyler (Kesselring), Zach (Horan) and Scott (Mattingly) all wrestled really good matches.”
The Chippewas competed at Eastern Michigan Saturday at the Eastern Michigan Duals with a 29-10 win against Drexel and a 22-13 loss to No. 11 Oregon State.
CMU hosts Stanford at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 25 in McGuirk Arena.
