James Hackney
The Tigers stayed undefeated with another dominating performance, taking out Wyoming 40-6. The team won nine matches, scoring bonus points in six of them. That was including missing typical starters Josh Edmond and Logan Gioffre. That didn’t matter, as Mizzou flexed it’s depth by scoring upsets at 133 and 149. After starting last week’s dual off slow, the Tigers flipped the script by coming out with a big upset. While Wyoming isn’t ranked, they are coming off a strong CKLV tournament and had multiple ranked wrestlers. With that, here are my takeaways.
- Noah Surtin Revenge
I’ve been high on Surtin since he stepped into the lineup late and unexpectedly only to crash the conference finals. Since then he’s only gotten better, but has shown a big jump this season. He hadn’t had a chance to prove it with a premier win, but got one here. Last year he was majored by Volk 11-1, getting caught on his back going for big moves. He showed a lot of growth in this match, battling back after giving up the first takedown. Surtin was attacking well, but Volk did a great job of scoring in the first period. From there it felt like Surtin was the aggressor, getting Volk to bite on his fakes.
Surtin got a big nearfall in the third, and had some momentum going to OT. There Surtin got to a leg and scrambled through to get the takedown. A lot of emotion from both him and the bench really represents what the win meant to him. When asked about what’s changed for Surtin since last year Coach Smith had a simple answer, “Leg attacks’. Surtin’s offense is buzzing, and this win shows that he is still a high level contender….
