Ann Arbor — It was another tough weekend for the MSU wrestling team as the Spartans dropped both their weekend duals to fall to 3-8 overall and 1-6 in the Big Ten.
“It sucks,” head coach Tom Minkel said after MSU’s 26-9 loss at No. 11 Michigan. “Part of it was the environment, the rivalry, but Michigan’s got a heck of a team, there’s no question about it.”
On Friday, the Spartans fell 27-8 to No. 7 Nebraska despite senior 125-pounder Eric Olanowski’s 15-0 technical fall to open the dual. The only other win of the night came from junior 149-pounder Dan Osterman’s 3-2 decision over No. 8 James Green.
The dual was the first time Nebraska and MSU faced one another since the former joined the Big Ten conference last year.
After dropping a 5-2 decision in the match against the Cornhuskers, No. 11 senior 174-pounder Curran Jacobs was set to bounce back for Sunday’s dual at Michigan and get some “Spartan revenge” against No. 5 Justin Zeerip, who had bested Jacobs at the MSU Open.
However, Jacobs was dominated from the get-go and fell in a 7-2 decision that gave Michigan the early lead.
But senior 184-pounder Ian Hinton was not going to allow MSU’s in-state rivals to run away with the match. Hinton dropped Michigan’s Hunter Collins in an 8-5 decision, which knotted the dual at 3-3.
“It was a battle,” Hinton said. “I thought there were a few questionable calls when I wanted to wrestle but you just have to roll with it.”
The referees were under fire during the entire dual, especially during No. 12 senior 157-pounder Anthony Jones Jr.’s 3-2 double overtime victory over Brandon Zeerip.
At the start of the second overtime, in which the wrestlers start in the down position, Zeerip might have launched out of the defensive position before the whistle blew, but he was awarded a point for an escape anyways.
However, Jones stuck with Zeerip and eventually came away with the victory.
“Going into overtime, I kind of knew my shots were good, and I just had to finish him,” Jones said. “It just came down to who wanted it more. We’re both two top-tier schools — big rivalries — and he’s kind of a younger guy, but at the end, I wanted it more.”
When it came down to it, the dual was a tale of two tapes. Before the intermission the Spartans hung strong, keeping it within a manageable 9-6 margin. But when the teams returned from the locker room, it was Michigan the rest of the way as the Spartans gave up two major decisions and a fall by pin.
“We ran into the veteran part of their lineup with the youthful part of our lineup,” Minkel said. “We had true freshmen going up against two veterans and a defending national champion, and that just sort of took us out of the dual.”
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