Looking back on the two tough matches the MSU wrestling team had this weekend at Jenison Field House, head coach Tom Minkel had split feelings about the two events.
In the 19-18 loss to in-state rival No. 21 Central Michigan on Friday, Minkel said he was proud of the way the Spartans (8-4 overall, 0-3 Big Ten) attacked the Chippewas (4-7), but he had much different feelings about their 22-15 loss on Sunday against No. 19 Northwestern.
“It was undoubtably the poorest we’ve wrestled, and I’m not sure (why),” Minkel said of the weekend. “There were some matches that I think maybe we thought we could win pretty handedly and went out there and maybe we weren’t really ready to go.”
Had MSU aggressively attacked the Wildcats (15-1, 3-1) the way it handled Central Michigan, the team might have come away with a win, if not a few more individual victories, junior 174-pounder Curran Jacobs said.
Sophomore 149-pounder Dan Osterman remained undefeated in duals on Friday after a 4-1 decision over Central Michigan’s Donnie Corby. However, Osterman’s boost for MSU was not enough to keep his teammates on the winning side through the match.
After Jacobs’ tough 5-2 loss to No. 5 Ben Bennett, junior 184-pounder Ian Hinton got the Spartans back on track with a 7-3 decision, despite frequent blood cleanup breaks interrupting the match.
Following up, junior 197-pounder Tyler Dickenson closed the match with a winning 6-2 decision, but it couldn’t pull MSU out of its point deficit.
“We’ve got some holes in our lineup a little bit from injuries and some places where we’ve been making some mistakes,” Minkel said.
“But as a team, I’m enormously proud of this group of young men.”
Against Northwestern, the Spartans struggled to get on the board.
Behind 22-0, they suffered losses in the first six matches, including Osterman’s first loss in a dual in a 6-5 decision from the Wildcats’ Andrew Nadhir.
MSU’s first win of the day came from Jacobs in a 8-6 decision, who came up from behind against Robert Kellogg.
“I got the escape, got the takedown and was just staying aggressive,” Jacobs said. “But it wasn’t a pretty win.”
The Spartans closed the match with a sudden victory double overtime win from Dickenson in a 7-5 decision over the Wildcats’ John Schoen, but it wasn’t enough to help the team recover.
“Hopefully we’re going to learn from (the losses) and come back stronger and more motivated and have a good week of training,” Dickenson said. “That’s what we’re going to think about, and we’ll learn from it and not dwell on it and move on.”
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