It wasn’t pretty, but Northern Iowa got the win 24-15 over Eastern Michigan. The Panthers won seven of the ten matches on route to their first MAC dual win of the year.
“It’s a win, but there’s a whole lot to work on,” UNI Head Coach Doug Schwab said after the dual, “we got a short week and we’ve obviously got to get better.”
The dual started off with an Eagle forfeit to #7 ranked Dylan Peters. The Eagles would double up the Panthers though, with a pair of falls by Vincent Pizzuto at 133 pounds and Michael Shaw at 141. Gunnar Wolfensperger stopped the bleeding and woke up the 1900 plus crowd in the West Gym. Wolfensperger had an aggressive takedown in the first period and scored a two-point nearfall in the second to bring the Panthers within three.
Jarrett Jensen had the only win that could be considered an upset by either squad. He took down the fourth ranked wrestler in the MAC, Brandon Zeerip. Jensen scored a takedown in the second period and escaped from bottom in the third to secure a 3-1 victory.
The story at 165 through 184 was not necessarily the matches, all three saw Panther victories by a combined score of 27-13, but conditioning. Cooper Moore was attacking early after having not wrestled in more than a month. He was up 8-2 going into the third when he was tilted for a two-point nearfall and would be hit by two stall warnings to win only 8-5.
“It’s one more score and I think that guy’s ready to crack, but we weren’t able to push him over the edge,” Schwab said, “you cannot let guys back into the match. Those are things that we expect out of our guys.”
UNI’s Curt Maas won easily over EMU’s Austin Geerlings, but again the Panther was a little gassed going to the third. Geerlings took the bottom position in the third, scoring an escape, Maas hit one more takedown on a reshot and gave up the escape to go up 9-3. That is when Geerlings scored a takedown of his own and began to try to turn Maas. Geerlings was hit for an illegal hold to end the period match at 10-5.
At 184 Cody Caldwell came out very quickly, scoring a takedown 10 seconds into the match with two nearfall points as well. Caldwell rode Mike Curby out the rest of the period to rack up 2:50 seconds of riding time. He did not let that diminish very much as he took the bottom position to start the second and almost immediately scored the escape point. Curby would take Caldwell down for the first time in the second, with Caldwell getting up and out making the score 6-2.
Again going to the third Caldwell looked to be in position to push the pace and maybe get that major decision, but after getting a takedown he was hit for two stall warnings while in the top position and gave up the escape at the for the final score of 9-4 with riding time.
At 197 Cody Krumwiede wrestled down a weight for the Panthers, losing 10-4 to Eastern Michigan’s Anthony Abro. Unlike the previous three matches however, Krumwiede looked good and stayed aggressive the entire match. In fact he got caught being overly aggressive in the third period twice, when he was trying to make a comeback, and got taken down time because of it. The loss here put Eastern Michigan within six points at 21-15.
Heavyweight saw the usual strength we have come to expect from Blaize Cabell, with two first period takedowns and a second period reversal, he looked good in a match against an opponent he should look good against. The only trouble he had on the day was when he was in the bottom position in the third period; he could not quite get up in a timely manner, but eventually he did and went on to score another takedown securing the 24-15 win for UNI.
The Panthers are back in action again in the West Gym this Friday against Northern Illinois at 7PM for Defeat Dementia / Keith Young Night. Keith Young was a three-time All-American for UNI from 1949-51. They also wrestle on Saturday at 2PM against Buffalo, again in the West Gym.
We have all our photos up from the dual on our Flickr page, be sure and check them out!
UNI 24, Eastern Michigan 15
125 – Dylan Peters (UNI) won by forfeit
133 – Vincent Pizzuto (EMU) won by pinfall over Leighton Gaul in 3:43
141 – Michael Shaw (EMU) won by pinfall over Jesse Etherington in 3:58
149 – Gunnar Wolfensperger (UNI) won 8-4 over Nicholas Barber
157 – Jarrett Jensen (UNI) won 3-1 over Brandon Zeerip
165 – Cooper Moore (UNI) won 8-4 over Devan Marry
174 – Curt Maas (UNI) won 10-5 over Austin Geerlings
184 – Cody Caldwell (UNI) won 9-4 over Mike Curby
197 – Anthony Abro (EMU) won 10-4 over Cody Krumwiede
285 – Blaize Cabell (UNI) won 9-3 over Gage Hutchinson
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