Brian Letters is one of the Terps' key returnees this season.

With success comes great expectations.

That is exactly the situation the Terrapin wrestling team is now facing thanks to a 2008-2009 season that saw them win the ACC Tournament and second year coach Kerry McCoy win ACC Coach of the Year.

D1collegewrestling.net, one of the foremost authorities on college wrestling on the internet, released its 2009-2010 preseason poll close to two weeks ago, and the Terps were No. 6.

The ranking is the highest in the program’s history. Although the site does not do conference rankings, it is safe to assume Maryland will be the favorite in the ACC as another conference foe doesn’t appear in the rankings until Virginia at No. 20. Virginia Tech is the only other ACC team ranked, as they came in at No. 21.

The expectations will be tremendous in College Park in large part due to the returnees McCoy will have at his disposal.

All-Americans last season, the Terps’ talented trio of junior Steven Bell and seniors Alex Krom and Hudson Taylor, were all ranked in the top-five in their weight classes by the website. Taylor was No. 3 in the 197-pound class, Krom was No.3 in the 141-pound class, and Bell was No.4 in the 133-pound class.

They weren’t the only Terps to receive rankings however. Senior Mike Letts is at No.6 in the 174-pound class, and junior Brian Letters was at No. 14 in the 157-pound rankings.

An argument could be made that, pound-for-pound, Bell, Taylor, and Krom are the three best wrestlers in the conference, with Taylor leading the charge as reigning ACC Wrestler of the Year.

In a time when it seems like many of the Terps’ teams are starting to flourish, the Terps wrestlers may be the best of the bunch. But they also had all this talent last year and only finished third during the regular season.

The pressure and the target will be on McCoy and his team to repeat as champions and stake their claim as the best team on campus.

Michael Lemaire is the Terrapin Wrestling beat writer for the 2009-2010 season. He can be reached at lemairedbk@gmail.com.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 10:33 am and is filed under Sports, Wrestling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.