Thursday did not go well. It was a disastrous day 1 for Iowa State with three different wrestlers going two and barbeque and another three barely hanging on in the consolations, with only two advancing in to this morning’s quarterfinals. The team sits in 19th place after the first two rounds. Hardly the performance that we or the team was hoping for.

Friday is where tournaments are made though - a couple guys making runs today can score a lot of team points by getting on the podium. And everyone left is a veteran that has wins over the kind of guys they’ll be facing today. Tune in to see whether the team rises for Friday or fades away to the buffet line.

Where: Enterprise Center, St. Louis, Mo

When:

Session IIIA (Consolations & Quarterfinals 125-157) - 10AM. - ESPNU

Session IIIB (Consolations & Quarterfinals 165-285) - 2PM - ESPNU

Session IV (Semifinals) - 7PM - ESPN2

Brackets & Live Stats: Trackwrestling

Stream: Every Match, Every Mat, ESPN+

Weight By Weight Breakdown - Championship Side

157: David Carr

Carr coasted through his Thursday with a pair of major decision victories and didn’t look afflicted with whatever it was that was bringing down the rest of the team. The competition picks up on Friday though. He’ll open up his day against #6 seeded Brayton Lee of Minnesota. They met once, during Carr’s redshirt year, with Carr winning 6-0. Hopefully we can see a repeat of that performance today.

Assuming Carr makes the semifinals, he’ll almost surely have a much anticipated matchup with #2 Hayden Hidley of NC State. They have never wrestled each other in college and over the course of the last two seasons both of these wrestlers have only lost to one opponent - #1 Ryan Deakin. This should be a tight match and Carr will need to be at the top of his game to pick up a win and be Iowa State’s first finalist since Kyven Gadson.

If Carr does stumble against Lee he’ll almost surely get #7 Jarrett Jaques of Missouri in the Blood Round on Friday night. Carr and Jaques wrestled back in January in Ames with Carr winning 14-1 so if that does come to pass he’ll be the heavy favorite to survive and advance in to Saturday’s All American rounds.

HWT: Gannon Gremmel

Gremmel managed to make it through the first day of competition without a single overtime period. And due to an upset his quarterfinals opponent will be #14 seeded Trent Hilger of Wisconsin instead of #3 seeded Stencel of Central Michigan. Hilger is no slouch - he was an All American in 2019. And the only times they have met, way back in the 2017-18 season, they split a pair of matches. But Gremmel would have been an underdog to Stencel and will instead be in a tossup against Hilger.

If Gremmel picks up the win there he’ll have face a much more intimidating opponent in #2 Mason Paris of Michigan in Friday night’s semifinals, but by that point he’d have secured All American Status and at least wrestling to seed so there’d be nothing for him to lose. If he’s unable to pick up a win and drops to the consolations he’d most likely be looking at a blood round matchup with #8 seeded Jordan Wood of Lehigh, another All American from 2019. Which means that today Gremmel will have two shots against returning All Americans and he needs to pick up a win against one of them to put himself on to the podium this season.

Weight By Weight Breakdown - Consolations

141: Ian Parker

Parker will start the day against #8 seeded Chad Red of Nebraska. They met twice in 2019 with Parker winning by fall in the first match and Red edging Parker 5-3 in the second. Both of these guys have plans to be on the podium on Saturday and one of them is going to be ending their tournament early. Hopefully Parker can pull it together for Day 2 and win the rubber match to keep his hopes alive.

If Parker picks up a win over Red he’ll likely get #16 seeded Mathews of Pitt, who just about knocked off #1 seeded Eierman before being sent to the consolations last night. A win there gives him either #6 Hart or #3 Rivera in the Blood Round on Friday night. Needless to say, it’s a tough road. But Parker is a tough guy so we’ll just have to see what happens.

184: Sam Colbray

Colbray has already outperformed his (lower than it should have been) seed, losing a tight match to the #4 guy in the bracket and then winning 12-4 for a major decision over #13. If he can wrestle on Friday like he did on Thursday he’s got a decent chance to stay alive. He’ll open up his day with a tossup match against #14 Caleb Hopkins of Campbell. If he can win that he’ll likely get a rematch against #11 Dakota Geer of Oklahoma State. The first match this season didn’t go so great for Colbray - Geer won it 12-4 at Big 12s just two weeks ago. So he’ll have to turn that one around. If he does succeed in that match he’ll be looking at a blood round matchup against #8 Taylor Venz of Nebraska with a a trip to the podium on the line. It’s a tall order, but if the good version of Colbray shows up for three matches today then three wins could be in the cards.

197: Marcus Coleman

Coleman’s opportunity today is more like Colbray’s than it is Parker’s. He’ll open up this morning against #11 Jay Aiello of Virginia and he’ll be the underdog there, but not overwhelmingly so. If he’s able to win that the competition will lull a little bit for a round as he’d get either #19 Penola of Purdue or #20 Shaw of North Carolina in the third round of consolations. He’d be favored against either of those guys so if he can get that first period win he should be able to make it to the Friday night sessions. There he’ll almost surely face #8 seeded Stephan Buchanan of Wyoming, who he has not wrestled before. That match would be similar to the Aiello one - Coleman would be the underdog, but not hugely so.

None of the three guys that Iowa State has starting the day in the consolations will be favored to fight through to the All American rounds tomorrow, but of the three of them Coleman probably has the highest chance based on who he’ll be lining up against.

Prediction

Yesterday’s performance put the team in a hole and even though I think we’ll see some better wrestling out of the guys in the consolations today they are all up against a tough set of opponents. I think that we’ll put both Carr and Gremell in to the semifinals and we’ll pick up a win or two on the backside, but I think when the final whistle blows tonight we’ll only have those two guys left standing with Carr moving in to the finals.

Next Up

The wrestling will continue on Saturday with the medal rounds in the morning and the finals on Saturday night. As long as any Cyclones make it through today we’ll have a preview up for the All American action before the first whistle blows on Saturday morning.