James Hackney
Missouri went on another long road trip and came back with two more Big 12 wins to improve their record to 10-2 on the season. Featuring a lineup without Kade Moore and Logan Gioffre, the Tigers dominated NDSU before needing a pin from Zach Elam to beat SDSU late. Between the two duals they won 13 of the 20 matches and scored bonus points in eight of them. The season continues to get closer to March and the Tigers only have two duals remaining against Northern Iowa and Iowa State coming up. With that, here are some of my takeaways from this weekend.
While some wrestlers continued to look flat, Surtin and O’Toole both wrestled and let it fly to score bonus points. Surtin gave up some takedowns going big, but scored multiple takedowns and nearfall in both his matches. Against Henningson he let it fly a bit too much as he likely could have gotten the tech. Surtin didn’t let that stop him from doing the same against Jordan, where he gave up two reversals but got two of his plus two sets of nearfall. Surtin is at his best when he’s offensive and he found plenty of success this weekend. O’Toole didn’t get any ranked opponents but he continued his Hodge campaign with another pin and tech. He now has six falls, four techs, and three majors for an 80% bonus rate.
While Hawks has been in the lineup at times this year it’s been up at 197 filling in for Rocky Elam. At 184 he’s notched some big wins at tournaments, including over #5 Isaiah Salazar this season. While I’m not sure the reason for starting today, it was a big opportunity for him. He was looking solid early but a feet to back move by Berge put him in a hole. Berge is a podium contender so a close loss isn’t bad, but without a win it’s harder to see this as a lineup battle. Meanwhile Whiting looked back to how he did early in the year with a dominant tech fall. The Tigers have two top 15 wrestlers here but unfortunately one of them is going to be on the bench.
The final result was Tanner Sloan pinning Rocky and DeVos blanking Mocco but I don’t know that it tells quite the whole story. SDSU wrestled very well and it wouldn’t shock me in the slightest if they were able to get wins again. Mocco was close to takedowns a few times, but ran out of time and had a position he’s comfortable in get stopped with potentially dangerous. He and DeVos have now wrestled five times, and DeVos made clear adjustments after dropping the previous three. It will be up to Mocco to find adjustments to get that close match.
Rocky’s match is harder to gauge. He actually had the 3-0 lead after getting to a leg and finishing in the first and was shooting for another one when thrown. He took neutral, a smart decision after getting tilted at NCAA’s. The head and arm came from a Rocky shot where…
