To be blunt, team expectations were not high going into the 3 duals on Sunday, but I had set some individual goals, and I am pretty pleased with how we met those goals overall. Stevens, Merchant Marines, and McDaniel are probably the top 3 teams in the conference, with very large rosters, and very large wrestlers. We currently are down to 8 healthy wrestlers, with 3 starters and now every single backup currently out for all or most of the rest of the season.
Long story short, our outstanding group of Sophomores continue to impress with both Sam Campbell and David Dennis going 3-0 on the day. Campbell wrestled three very smart matches and extended his team leading wins to 12, takedowns to 36, and team points to 41.5. David Dennis had a very special weekend. In a season and a ha
lf leading up to Sunday, Dennis had wrestled 7 All-Americans or nationally ranked opponents, and lost them all. Now, this sounds bad, but 4 of those seven losses were either in overtime or a 1 takedown match, and the other 3 were minor decisions. Not too shabby for a freshman/sophomore going against seniors. On sunday, Dennis had the opportunity to wrestle 2 more top-10 nationally ranked opponents in Charles Favia of Stevens Institute and Dan Twito of the Merchant Marine Academy. Favia has been ranked as high as #10 this year, and Twito has been ranked as high as #5, and is also the defending conference champion and two time national qualifier. The losing streak would not continue though, as Dennis defeated Favia in the first match 3-1 and below is the video of his match against Twito. Had to seriously reduce the quality to post the video. My apologies.Pretty sweet. Nice work David! Dennis is second on the team in wins with 10 and team points (30), and leads the team in riding time and riding time points. In other news, Ben Ersing wrestled very well despite going 1-2, and I'm very confident that he will avenge one if not both of those losses at conference. A couple of mistakes by him was the difference, and we'll get that taken care of.
Big match this Saturday at home vs. Johns Hopkins, 2pm. We won't have a full lineup again, but we'll give 'em hell anyway!
