Wrestlers Back Home To Take On Wyoming

After an improved performance at the Cliff Keen Invitational in Las Vegas last weekend, the Cyclones are once again back in Hilton tonight to take on Big XII affiliate member Wyoming in their last dual of the semester. This is likely to be another rough outing for the Cyclones. But with a month off before the next competition, hopefully we’ll start to see improvement in January as the changes new staff is implementing get the time they need to take hold.

In addition to the dual tonight, the redshirting freshman and team backups will be competing at the UNI Open in Cedar Falls today. Brackets for that can be found on Trackwrestling (no cost) and Flowrestling is streaming the matches live (Subscription required).

Where: Hilton Coliseum, Ames, IA

When: 7:00PM, Saturday December 9th

TV/Stream: Cyclones.TV

Projected Lineups

Rankings from Intermat/TheOpenMat/FloWrestling

Key Matches

133

Last weekend in Vegas Bridges put together a pretty solid run, making it to the blood round before falling to Austin Desanto of Drexel. Parker has been up and down this season and last weekend was more down than up. He is a freshman, so some of that is to be expected. Eventually though it would be nice for him to settle in and start wrestling to his ability on a more consistent basis. The good Ian Parker wins this match. The bad one gets pinned in the first period. If Iowa State is going to win this dual they need the good Parker to show up.

141

In the only head to head matchup between Iowa State and Wyoming last weekend Storr was pinned by Meredith. A win over a highly decorated veteran like Meredith is probably too tall of an order for Storr but hopefully he’s been working on protecting himself on bottom and can go the distance this time around.

125/165

These are two weights where the ISU wrestler is probably going to be overmatched. Getting an upset win would be amazing but the real key here is for the Cyclones to stay off their backs and avoid giving up bonus points. This is already going to be a hard meet to win if we give up 6 points at these weights. If we give up 12 instead that likely puts the meet out of reach regardless of what happens elsewhere.

Prediction

The way Wyoming matches up makes this a tough meet for ISU to win. They neutralize the points we’d normally get from Storr with Meredith and are in position to score bonus at our weaker weights. Even giving ISU all the toss ups and being generous with bonus points I still can’t come up with a scenario better than a 17-18 loss. But based on what we’ve seen so far I think we probably drop one or two of those toss ups and end up with a 13-21 type loss to remain winless in duals on the season.

If we do get a win it will likely come off of getting lots of bonus points from 184-HWT.

Next Up

Other than a handful of individuals who will be at Midlands after Christmas, the team is taking the rest of the year off from competition. They will be back in action on January 5th and 7th, taking on Northern Colorado on Friday night and then Oregon State on Sunday afternoon.