maligned

I like it. Duals require 14 weight classes. Tournaments allow whichever 14 guys you want to enter. It would make the state series very, very interesting.

Sorry if I missed it somewhere: anyone know if Evan Ellis is wrestling somewhere this season? I saw he's not on the Brown roster.

Anybody know why she made the move up to 62 from 59? I thought she looked more dynamic at 59, but it could just be down to that being a more crowded weight for us domestically.

Kayla thrashes the Uzbek and advances to the bronze medal match against a very tough German girl who has been their senior world team rep the past 3 years. Both Kayla and the German, Niemesch, have teched all their opponents except the Ukrainian who beat them (who is also a senior world-teamer that won bronze at the senior-level euro's this year). The finals start at 11am eastern time this morning. Kayla should go on the mat at about 11:45 or a little after.

Kayla Miracle went 1-1 today at 62kg at the U23 Worlds. The Ukrainian girl who beat her later advanced to the final, bringing Kayla back into the repechage to face an Uzbek girl tomorrow morning. If she wins, she'll wrestle for bronze tomorrow afternoon.

Maybe not in the head-to-head it wasn't that day--but if you look at all of those other results together, I mean to say that their quality level appears to be virtually the same. Singletary won by an eyelash against a guy that finished 4th in a field that Parris destroyed. Those common opponent comparisons are just as predictive of future success as head-to-head results. If you take into account collectively all the matches I mentioned above, their quality level appears to be very, very similar.

Interesting comparing results here: Michigan St. Open: Parris over Ohio's starter, Zack Parker, 10-4. Parker beats D2 Runner-Up, Kam Teacher twice, 5-4 & 2-0. Ohio Int Open: Singletary over Parris 15-9. Singletary over Teacher 8-6 in SV1. It seems Singletary/Parris is very much a coin flip.

Should be interesting. As much as Michigan is bringing back, I'm sure it will be super tempting to lift his redshirt when the only other two options on the team probably will have very limited chances of scoring points in important duals or at Big 10's.

As mentioned, 14-second fall in the final over MAC champ and NCAA #16 seed at nationals, Matt Stencel. Semi's win was 10-4 over redshirt senior Zack Parker of Ohio, who had a D1 winning record last year and picked up quarterfinal and 3rd-place match wins in this tournament over the D2 national runner-up. Quarters win was a 36-second fall over Michigan State's backup heavy who went 12-6 unattached last year. First round win was 10-1 over Central Michigan backup Jenkins who was a Michigan 285 state champ a couple years ago and won half his matches last year wrestling unattached.

Mason at 1:17

I've watched a lot of Sarah's national and international matches over the past 5 years. Her evolution into one of the best in the world has been incredible to see. Even just 3 seasons ago, she struggled mightily to have the firepower and the engine to battle with our best domestically--let alone internationally. But she kept evolving and her skills--especially in terms of variety of attacks--blossomed immensely. Then, she decided to get serious about diet and conditioning, went down a weight class as a result without even trying, and now she's all attack all the time with the motor to go with it. She's turned into an incredibly entertaining wrestler capable of beating absolutely anyone. She's most definitely capable of beating her Japanese opponent tomorrow and, win or lose, this worlds is the culmination of a most-impressive rise to the top of the heap.

Sarah DOMINATES her Canadian semi-finals opponent 10-0 in just 3:38 and heads to the GOLD MEDAL FINAL tomorrow at noon!!

Side note: If you follow this stuff, you know Indiana's own Kayla Miracle was beaten 2 matches to 1 by Mallory Velte in a hotly contested best-of-3 "Final X" event to be our 136.5-lb representative at this week's world championships. Velte has won her first 3 matches this morning by 8 points or more and is also in the semi-finals. Side note #2: Our unbeatable multiple-time golden girl, Helen Maroulis, who last year teched every opponent and didn't yield even a single point on her way to gold, was put to her back and pinned in her opening match this morning. Her Azerbaijani opponent lost her next match and Maroulis was eliminated from the competition.

As Runner-Up said on another thread, Sarah Hildebrandt beats a Kazakh 5-1 and an Azerbaijani 15-9 this morning to advance to the 117-lb world championship semi-finals a little later. She'll be the second match up when action resumes at 10:45am eastern/9:45am central. For those not familiar with the international tournament procedures, this guarantees she'll wrestle for either World gold or World bronze tomorrow afternoon. Let's go, Sarah!!

It is actually the double bronze era (began way back in 2005, surprisingly). In the above results, Sadulaev and Gaidarov were gold/silver and Murtazaliev and Vereb were both bronze medalists.