If you didn’t realize it before, let me be the first to tell you that the college wrestling season is coming up quick. The first day of official practice just 19 days away (that sounds like a lot, but at the same time it isn’t) and everyone is starting to get fired up and we are all ready to talk college wrestling. You have seen some of it on IA Wrestle already, as we have put up two Division III previews so far, and we plan on releasing out Iowa State preview soon! In addition to our coverage, WIN Magazine has published their preseason rankings, and Christian Pyles of Flowrestling has put out his 125 preseason rankings.
Leading all wrestlers from Iowa is Hawkeye All-American Thomas Gilman, who Pyles puts at #3 in his preseason rankings, ahead of West Virginia’s Zeke Moisey, who stunned Gilman in last year’s NCAA semifinals. Northern Iowa’s 2014 All-American Dylan Peters comes in at #8 in the rankings.
Preseason-wise these rankings look pretty good. Ohio State’s Nathan Tomasello is the returning NCAA champ and rightfully deserves the #1 spot over Nico Megaludis of Penn State, who is coming off his 2015 redshirt. Despite losing to Moisey in the semifinals, Gilman had a much better resume as a whole in 2015, and a good case could be made for why he did get the spot over a wrestler who beat him. This will be a big year for Gilman, as we know he can beat Tomasello, but what will be key is how he handles Megaludis, who beat Gilman 4-1 in their only match two years ago at Carver.
Looking back Peters got a pretty rough draw in St. Louis, which may have cost him his shot at becoming a two-time AA as a sophomore, but he will be a good bet to be a threat to be right back in the mix here in 2015-16. Peters is an extremely dangerous wrestler, as Tomasello found out last year at Cliff-Keen when he pinned the future NCAA champion. He has already cracked the top ten in career falls in a Panther singlet, so he is definitely a wrestler to keep an eye on this year.