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By Molly Irene Olmstead
molly-olmstead@uiowa.edu
The Iowa wrestling team won six matches against Northwestern on Sunday, including three major decisions and a pin, in a 24-13 win over the Wildcats.
But head coach Tom Brands said he wasn’t impressed with his team, despite its six extra bonus points.
Three Hawkeyes — 125-pound Matt McDonough, 144-pound Montell Marion, and 165-pound Mike Evans — won major decisions, and 133-pound Tony Ramos dominated with a first-period pin.
These four wrestlers represent what Brands said he wants to see from the six other weight classes. They didn’t keep their matches close to “eke it out” in the end, and they didn’t try to merely stay close or try to protect their leads, he said.
Instead, the sixth-year coach said the quartet came onto the mat ready to wrestle from the first whistle, sent messages to its opponents by scoring early points, and — most importantly — the four continued to “widen the gap” between themselves and their opponents.
“It’s time to not wait, it’s time to go,” Brands said. “… You can either [win] one way, or you can do it the other way … the hard-easy way is you go out there, you try to score points and you work hard and you try to widen the gap. Or you can go the hard-hard way, and that’s to keep it close and eke it out at the end.”
Brands said continuing to attack opponents, even when sitting on a comfortable lead, is the most crucial step for the Hawkeyes to score bonus points.
“Bonus points are not just important for the team and how the team score looks at the end of the meet, but also for guys in case that guy comes around again,” Marion said. “You should be major decisioning, teching, pinning those guys — not letting these guys have any kind of a prayer.”
Marion, the nation’s third-ranked 144 pounder, scored his first takedown 25 seconds into the first period and had two more in the first to have a 6-2 lead going into the second period. Marion continued to rack up takedowns against Northwestern’s Pat Greco; he tallied four in the second period and two in the third to finish with a 21-7 major decision.
“I don’t feel like I need to build my confidence up by the guys that I beat, but the way that I beat them. When it comes [No. 6 Jake Sueflohn] I beat from Nebraska, I don’t feel like his ranking means anything.
“I feel like the way I go about it is a confidence booster. It lets me know that I’m attacking my matches in a certain kind of way … finishing hard from the first period to the end.”
But it’s not always all about the bonus points; No. 6 Ethen Lofthouse said his win over No. 9 Lee Munster was just as important for his team as scoring an extra bonus point from a major decision.
Lofthouse gave up an early takedown in the first period, but responded with an escape. The second period remained scoreless and Lofthouse entered the third trailing Munster, 2-1.
He exploded in the third, scoring an escape, takedown, and riding time point in the third to give him a 5-2 victory.
But his fifth win against a top-10 opponent isn’t enough, the 174-pound starter said.
“You want to be the best,” Lofthouse said. “We’re never satisfied until we have 10 national champions, 10 pins in every match. It’s big beating these guys, and it’s an important step, but I’ve got to widen the gap.”
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