Chippewas set to battle Stanford
Wrestling will matches up with No. 23 Stanford at 7:30 p.m. tonight at McGuirk Arena.
Head Coach Tom Borrelli’s son, Jason Borrelli, is in his fifth season as head coach of Stanford. The elder Borrelli said the team is looking forward to the competition against a solid opponent.
“They have a good team,” Tom said. “I think in the latest ranking they're ahead of us. They have a good dual meet team this year. We need the competition, so it will be good for us.”
Last weekend at the EMU Open, the Chippewas defeated Drexel 29-10 and lost to No. 11 Oregon State 22-13.
Leading CMU this season are 125-pound redshirt freshman Corey Keener and 141-pound sophomore Zach Horan. Keener is 7-1 overall with a 3-0 dual record. Horan is 8-0 overall with a 3-0 dual record.
CMU has five wrestlers in the Amateur Wrestling News Division I ranking. Keener is 15 at 125 pounds, senior Joe Roth is ranked 13 in the 133 pound class, junior Mike Ottinger is 13 at 174 pounds, Horan is 15 at 141 pounds and sophomore Luke Smith is ranked 16 at 157 pounds.
Chippewa wrestlers are 20-8 in duals meet matches this season while recording nine falls. However, the higher weight classes, 184 pounds and up, will need to improve. This season, they have a combined 2-7 dual record.
Redshirt senior Ryan Mango is a two-time All-American for the Cardinals. Senior Bret Baumber was 23-12 last season for Stanford while capturing his first PAC-12 Conference title in the 165-pound class.
Borrelli said his team worked on getting better at putting more pressure on the top and getting out of the bottom in practice last week.
“We have worked a lot on getting out of the bottom,” Borrelli said. “We worked a lot on our top and our breakdowns while putting more pressure on top. Those are things we really emphasized this week. I would like to see us get better at those things.”
Borrelli said the team is getting healthier with Roth and both 184-pounders, senior Craig Kelliher and redshirt freshman Austin Severn, all set to compete on Monday.
