It’s hard to believe, but the Terrapin Wrestling team is entering the final stretch of their 2009-2010 regular season. With a grueling December over and done with, and a comfortable 3-0 start in the ACC, the Terps have just five matches left in the season starting with tonight’s showdown with George Mason.
The Terps really only have one road match left, the season finale in Charlottesville, and tonight’s match in Fairfax, Va. should result in victory.
The Patriots (3-7) have lost three straight and five of their last six entering Friday’s match, including a 24-11 defeat at the hands of Drexel, a team the Terps demolished in November. Meanwhile, the Terps (15-4) are coming off a weekend in which they loss to unranked Navy and dominanted in a dual meet sweep of North Carolina State and Duke the following day.
Still shorthanded
The only potential good news for the Patriots is the Terps will still be without two of their best wrestlers, Alex Krom and Mike Letts, and experienced senior James Knox.
The competition-heavy part of the schedule took its toll on the trio. Knox wrestled one match, against North Carolina State, other than that neither he nor Krom has seen competition since Jan. 17. Letts, who has really been banged up the entire season, hasn’t wrestled since the National Duals on Jan. 10.
The Terps will have 133-pound star Steve Bell back in the lineup after he missed all of last weekend, but once again coach Kerry McCoy will be looking to three inexperienced subs; 125-pound Pat Strizki, 141-pound Matt Bogusz, and 174-pound Owen Smith.
All three have been involved in important matches for the Terps for the last three weeks now, but the results have been mixed. The team’s best sub has been 133-pound Mookie Golden, the other three have a combined record of 5-9 over the last three weeksn, with three of those wins coming against lowly Ashland.
This is essentially an open audition for these guys for next year’s starting job with the exception of Smith. There are guys behind them who will be their competition next year, and this experience they are getting now is invaluable.
They need to start making the most of it.
Score more
There so many different physical and mental aspects to wrestling that trying to pin point places where improvement is needed can be difficult. But McCoy is certainly trying his best to isolate areas to work on. This week it has been scoring more points.
“Whether it is working on takedowns, getting back points, reversals, you name it and we are trying to work on it and be more aggressive,” McCoy said. “We need to start scoring so then we can put ourselves in the position where making one mistake isn’t the end of the world.”
The Terps posted good scores in their ACC matches last weekend, but scoring just 14 points against Navy is disappointing. 197-pound star Hudson Taylor, who was not pleased he didn’t pin his guy, won a major decision and so did 165-pounder Josh Asper, but other than that the team didn’t fight hard enough.
They will get a great opportunity to score a lot of points tonight against the overmatched Patriots. The schedule gets hard from here, including three more ACC matches, two against ranked foes Virginia and Virginia Tech. But tonight should be a perfect opportunity for the Terps be more aggressive and hone their offensive attacks.
Michael Lemaire is the Terrapin Wrestling beat writer. He can be reached at lemairedbk@gmail.com