Offseason shoulder surgery robbed the team of Mike Miller, who makes up the other half of the senior roster. More importantly, Miller is an All-American 165-pounder who has only been able to wrestle in five of the team’s 13 dual-meets.

The Chippewas have tried multiple different starting lineups to fill the gap Miler left, but inexperience and youth have hurt the team.

The original replacement at 165-pounds was sophomore Adam Miller, who was also bound down by lingering injuries, though he was able to build up a 7-13 record before choosing to leave the wrestling team.

“(Adam) just decided he didn’t want to wrestle anymore, and I think, after his first semester, he wanted to focus on school,” said head coach Tom Borrelli.

The strong spots for CMU have come in the form of the team’s top three wrestlers. Sophomore Ben Bennett and juniors Jarod Trice and Scotti Sentes have combined for a 66-14 record this season, but the rest of the team hasn’t been able to hit its strides at the same time.

“Though we’ve had a lot of disappointment,” Borrelli said, "our guys don’t seem to be down at all and I’m happy with the team’s attitudes and mindset."

Junior Chad Friend has seen some of the top competition in the league this season, holding just a 2-13 record, though he used a 6-5 decision against Ohio Friday to claim his first career Mid-American Conference win.

Sophomore Donnie Corby has improved to 18-13 on the season, winning his past two matches, though his turning on came with Bennett’s first loss in 12 matches.

Though Bennett has been the definition of clutch this season, he suffered a pin against OU’s Nick Purdue en route to a 21-17 team loss to the Bobcats.

Bennett was up 5-2 in the second period before suffering a pin from the neutral position, which Borrelli described as the "straw that broke the camel's back." The team lost a point due after Borrelli argued the call.

“I felt like we out-wrestled them in the dual meet, and they had three takedowns to our 10 or more,” Borrelli said. “If you look at it … there was a 22-point swing that the officials had to do with.”

Borrelli was referring to two pins in that match that came from the neutral position and an overtime point awarded to OU after senior Ryan Cubberly was called for stalling.

The scoreboard didn’t accurately reflect how the teams wrestled in the eyes of the CMU head coach, though he said the team’s loss to the Bobcats would fuel the wrestlers rather than hurt them mentally.

“They sat there and watched the same thing I did, so it should motivate us a lot,” he said. “We got some tough calls, we’ll put it that way.”

With the loss, CMU slips to fifth place in the MAC: a spot unfamiliar to a program that has finished in the conference's top spot the last nine seasons.

Three consecutive weeks at home will allow the Chippewas to make a strong push for the MAC title, hosting Buffalo, Eastern Michigan and Kent State to close out the dual meet season.

Buffalo, who holds a potentially deceiving 0-2 MAC record, will take on the Chippewas at 2 p.m. Sunday in Mount Pleasant.

“We’re not in a position to overlook anybody,” Borrelli said. “We have to wrestle and put ourselves in position to win every match. Though I thought we did that in Ohio, unfortunately it didn’t go our way.”