By DAN McCOOL – Des Moines Register
Much of the college wrestling world considered Iowa’s performance in winning the NCAA championship last March to be dominant.
The population inside top-ranked Iowa’s wrestling room wants to show this season what a really dominant effort looks like.
Iowa finished a season that included a 21-1 record in duals and the National Duals championship by scoring 117ahead of Ohio State.
“We dominated nationals, but really we didn’t even come close to our potential,” said 184-pound all-American Phil Keddy.
Tom Brands introduced his third Iowa team to the media Wednesday. There is a returning national champion (junior 149-pounder Brent Metcalf) and five returning all-Americans among a pack of seven returning NCAA qualifiers. Metcalf said there is room for improvement.
“You can’t really call it perfect until you get 10 guys on top of the podium,” said Metcalf, who was named outstanding wrestler of the NCAA Tournament last season. “And really, it’s not perfect unless you have 10 guys with pins all the way through the tournament.
“We got the job done as a team, but the way I performed, the way a lot of these guys performed was not up to our standard.”
Minnesota was the first team to have 10 all-Americans. Is it a realistic goal for the Hawkeyes to have 10 national champions?
“Sure it is, definitely a realistic goal,” Keddy said. “We don’t even want to have 10 national champs, we want to have 15, 16, 17, 20 guys that know and can win the national title. Not only winning the national title, but dominate on the way, pick up bonus points and score as many points as possible.”
Keddy and Metcalf are joined by all-Americans Charlie Falck at 125, Joe Slaton at 133, 2006 all-American Alex Tsirtsis at 141 and Jay Borschel at 174.
Brands said the Hawkeyes could make themselves known outside of the wrestling world because of what they did last season.
“There’s not a better time or chance to put household names out there,” Brands said. “When you have this much attention and scrutiny put on a program because of good things that are happening, maybe the expectations are higher. While that’s maybe construed as not being fair or not, it’s what we embrace.”
The Hawkeyes are back to their old standard of being the team everyone wants to beat. The program’s championship roots are in the decade of the ’70s; its growth took over the college world in the ’80s and ’90s.
“We put ourselves in the position that we are in because we love the pressure, we love having the bulls-eye and we love proving them wrong,” Metcalf said.
The squad is garnering the type of notice that great Iowa teams of the past enjoyed. So perhaps it’s fitting that there is some old-school flavor this winter.
Iowa will host the Iowa City Duals at the Fieldhouse before moving to Carver-Hawkeye Arena for a 3:30 meet against Arizona State Nov. 21. The Fieldhouse was Iowa’s home until the Hawkeyes christened Carver-Hawkeye Arena 35-7 over Oklahoma.
“The Fieldhouse is historic,” Brands said. “I’m not so sure that’s as big of a part of it as having three dual meets before a marquee dual meet against Arizona State.”
Brands said this winter’s Hawkeyes aren’t ready to have the swagger of the old Hawkeye teams.
“We’ve got five weight classes that are solid right now and five weight classes that, in my mind, we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Brands said. “That may be harsh, but there is no such thing as an automatic. Even if you had 10 Metcalfs or 10 Keddys or 10 Borschels, there are still no automatics.”
The Hawkeyes favor building success through manual labor.
Filed under: College Wrestling, Iowa | Tagged: College Wrestling, Iowa Wrestling
