ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The Big Ten Wrestling Championships: More dramatic than The Notebook.
More dramatic than that time you broke up with your girlfriend for the fourth time, and she didn’t want to let you go.
The drama reached its peak, fittingly, in Iowa’s final match of the day.
Hawkeye heavyweight Dan Erekson was nursing a 2-1 lead over Penn State’s Cameron Wade when the referee blew his whistle, allowing Erekson to replace his fallen headgear. A solid three seconds after the shrill sound echoed through a relatively quiet arena, Wade took a shot to Erekson’s lower leg.
Erekson went down hard. The senior hit the mat in a way that a knee injury would have surprised no one (don’t worry folks, the Danimal is still in tip-top shape).
The Iowa bench, however, did not go down.
Head coach Tom Brands might have set a new NFL Combine record if someone had measured his jump to the center of the mat.
Brands was furious, and rightly so. Wade took a cheap shot and could have seriously injured Erekson.
The presence of Penn State headman Cael Sanderson (always annoying to see in person – I think he might use 8 pounds of dome wax) didn’t help the situation. Sanderson threw some verbal jabs at Brands for his outburst, further enraging the Iowa coach.
After the match, Brands said he wasn’t going to talk about the incident (he almost didn’t talk to the media at all he was so peeved), and I wouldn’t have blamed him.
Brands is a fiery, emotional coach, and speaking about the incident so soon could have only caused problems. Most of those problems, though, would have been for Sanderson if he crossed paths with Brands again.
The fourth-year head coach could have taken down a grizzly bear judging by how amped up he was.
Erekson played the incident off, finishing the match and getting himself into the finals.
But the drama was not limited to the coaches.
Dan Dennis’ match with defending Big Ten champion Franklin Gomez almost put the arena into collective cardiac arrest.
The two 133-pounders were locked in a 2-2 tie late in the third period, but Gomez held riding time advantage. With 20 seconds left, Dennis struck for a two-point takedown, giving him a 4-2 lead and eliminating riding time.
After a restart to the center of the mat, Gomez initiated a mind-boggling scramble that had the Hawkeye and Spartan flipping over each other at warp speed. Gomez ended up on top for a reversal, but Dennis soon was back in control.
The Hawkeyes’ reversal was signaled, but eventually taken away because the match was ruled to have ended. Lost in all the scrapping was a hand-locking call that gave Dennis a 5-4 victory.
The match-ending scramble was nothing I’d ever seen. Dennis and Gomez had an incredible match earlier this year (Dennis won that in the first tiebreak period, 3-2), but this was rapid fire muscles putting on a clinic.
Not to be outdone, 197-pounder Chad Beatty and Minnesota’s Sonny Yohn decided to go extra time.
Beatty trailed the Golden Gopher deep into the third period, but scored a takedown with 15 seconds left to tie up the score, 6-6.
An overtime period yielded no scoring, and a tiebreaker ensued. Yohn started down in the first tiebreak period, but could never escape Beatty’s grasp.
But a locking hands call gave Yohn a 7-6 lead he wouldn’t relinquish in the second half of the tiebreak.
Beatty was upset at the hand-locking call and the fact that Yohn wasn’t called for stalling after repeatedly resisting the action.
The senior from Wilton, Iowa who had come back from a foot injury, battled through two highly contested matches and deserved a trip to the finals.
In the end, though, Iowa sends six wrestlers to the finals, and holds a 32.5-point advantage heading into the final session.
If Saturday’s matches were any indication of things to come, I just might have to bring my defibrillator.
— by J.T. Bugos
