Greetings from the Chattanooga airport, where I’m stamping out this week’s (slightly delayed) roundup after a wonderful two days Scuffling in the Scenic City. 

Box Scores | Rankings | Last Week's Roundup

It’s not hard to find discussion online about how the holiday tournaments are “down” this year. And while you could undoubtedly do a numerical analysis regarding the participants at this season’s Midlands, Salute and Scuffle and figure out how many fewer ranked and credentialed wrestlers competed compared to years past, that does not interest me, so I shan’t do it. 

But maybe it interests you, and that’s perfectly fine. I would encourage anyone with the time and inclination to conduct that analysis. Have at it! 

What I would like to do instead is discuss how much the Scuffle kicked ass and how you can still find intriguing storylines and entertaining wrestling in tournaments that feature more under-the-radar teams and athletes. 

There’s gold in the Southern Scuffle brackets and tournaments of its ilk. All you need to do is watch!

More on that shortly. First things first: 

The Dual of the Century, of the Week

UNI’s Statement Win Over UNL, 24-9

The Panthers have been the victors of previous DotCotWs, and there’s a simple reason for that, which is that Doug Schwab and company have built an outstanding program in Cedar Falls that regularly hosts the top D1 competition, and that the UNI community shows up to support their program that regularly punches above its weight. 

Case in point: Over 3,000 fans were in the McLeod Center to watch Northern Iowa defeat the Nebraska Cornhuskers, a storied Big Ten program that features ten nationally ranked wrestlers, including six in the top 10. 

UNI can boast of nine nationally ranked wrestlers. It should also be noted that at the dual, both teams were absent one ranked competitor. Below is the box score. 

125: Trever Anderson (UNI) over #5 Caleb Smith (NEB) (Dec 5-2) 

133: #21 Jacob Van Dee (NEB) over Julian Farber (UNI) (Dec 5-0) 

141: #9 Cael Happel (UNI) over #5 Brock Hardy (NEB) (Dec 7-5) 

149: #5 Ridge Lovett (NEB) over #15 Colin Realbuto (UNI) (Dec 12-9) 

157: #5 Ryder Downey (UNI) over #4 Antrell Taylor (NEB) (SV-1 5-2) 

165: #19 Jack Thomsen (UNI) over Christopher Minto (NEB) (SV-1 4-1) 

174: #16 Lenny Pinto (NEB) over #14 Jared Simma (UNI) (Dec 6-5) 

184: #2 Parker Keckeisen (UNI) over #7 Silas Allred (NEB) (Fall 3:38) 

197: #13 Wyatt Voelker (UNI) over #29 Camden McDanel (NEB) (Dec 6-4) 

285: #17 Lance Runyon (UNI) over #28 Harley Andrews (NEB) (Dec 11-6)

Trever Anderson got things rolling for the Panther Train with an upset over All-American Caleb Smith. Cael Happel followed up with a milder but still significant upset over two-time All-American Brock Hardy. Later, Ryder Downey got revenge over Antrell Taylor after 'Swipe-Gate' in the 2024 Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational finals. 

What a great rivalry those two are developing.

Then Parker Keckeisen shut the door on any thoughts of a Husker comeback. 

Parker calls match! #PantherTrain | #EverLoyal pic.twitter.com/lDFhsh2Dde

— UNI Wrestling (@UNI_wrestling) January 5, 2025

The highlight for Nebraska was Lenny Pinto getting a measure of revenge of his own against Jared Simma, who defeated Pinto in a wild one in the CKLV consi rounds. 

Overall this was a classic 'team win' for the Panthers over a program that, if they're not considered a blue-blood then they're pretty darn close. 

I would also not sell any Husker stock based on the result of this dual. Nebraska has an excellent opportunity to bounce back with a home dual against a salty Minnesota squad this Saturday. 

UNI can keep their momentum going while staying in Cedar Falls as they host the Multi-Divisional National Dual Meet Championships which kicks off this Friday. 

Let’s Scuffle Up and Deal

Hundreds of wrestlers became Scufflonians as the Southern Scuffle brought 23 NCAA D1 teams to Chattanooga for the first major college tournament of 2025. 

No, this wasn't the deepest Scuffle in history, nor did it feature a matchup as titanic as Kyle Dake vs David Taylor, however, the Southern Scuffle can still be said to be in rude health as far as competitions go.  

21 programs had at least one wrestler place in the top eight, and 18 programs had multiple placers, which meant the McKenzie Arena on day 2 was teeming with university personnel. 

Scanning the results and perusing the brackets doesn't do justice to what the competition meant to the teams and coaches who were in attendance. The stakes aren't as high as they are in March, but programs were taking those blood round matches seriously, and the emotions were running hot. 

For example, Davison College, with an enrollment of just 1,900 undergrads, punched two wrestlers through to the medal rounds, and you know head coach Nate Carr Jr was pumped about it. 

Or how about the fact that Chattanooga, who's been hosted this tournament since 2012, finally got their first Moc to the top of the podium when Sergio Desiante won the 174lb bracket with an upset over #10 Gaven Sax of Oklahoma? 

Or how about Morgan State, a program that isn't even three years old, getting a Scuffle placer? Or Brown getting their first-ever champ? Or Northern Colorado getting a second consecutive title from Stevo Poulin and a runner-up finish from AJ Heeg? Or Duke having a finalist? Or American having two placers? Or the Citadel notching a finalist and five total placers? 

Or maybe you just care about watching cool wrestling moves? Will guess what, there's a whole bunch of wrestlers who, whether they place at NCAAs or not, know how to hit rad moves, and many of them were at the Scuffle. Don't believe me? Well check this out. 

American’s Caleb Campos goes BIG twice to take out #4 Lennox Wolak at the Southern Scuffle!#ncaawrestling pic.twitter.com/bcPkuBmFIs

— FloWrestling (@FloWrestling) January 5, 2025

And this. 

Jordan Williams gets the clutch overtime reversal to make the Southern Scuffle finals 💪#ncaawrestling pic.twitter.com/Jp0yUgyT4N

— FloWrestling (@FloWrestling) January 5, 2025

Okay rant over. There were other notable happenings from Chattanooga.

• Penn State finished tied for second place while sending just seven wrestlers and zero presumed starters. 
  • True freshmen Zack Ryder, Connor Mirasola and Cole Mirasola won 184, 197 & 285 respectively. They are expected to redshirt. 
  • Connor Pierce finished second at 149, and has top 3 NCAA placers in the lineup at 141, 149 & 157 ahead of him in the PSU lineup.
  • Kurt McHenry finished fifth at 125, and likely did not advance his case for the starting job at 125, which will probably remain in the hands of Luke Lilledahl. 
• Virginia Tech sent a motley mix of starters, backups and wrestlers still in the hunt for a starting gig. 
  • Hunter Catka and Sonny Sasso are challenging Jimmy Mullen and Andy Smith for the starting rolls at 285 & 197 respectively. They finished 4th and 3rd and have their work cut out for them if they want to dislodge their teammates from the lineup. 
  • All-Americans Lennox Wolak and TJ Stewart finished 6th and 5th respectively at 174 and 184. Safe to say that was not the result either were hoping for. 
• Army won the tournament with 9 placers. That was without placement points from two of their most credentialed wrestlers, #24 Charlie Farmer and #23 Ethan Berginc. 
• Oklahoma finished in second place, also with 9 placers. True freshman Beric Jordan impressed at 125, placing 7th in one of the tournament's deepest weights. 

I'd say that's more than enough evidence to confidently state that it's a great time to be a Scufflonian. 

Other Things Happened

Cornell Thumped Mizzou in Columbia

The meeting between two marquee programs was mildly marred by both schools competing without several starters. 

The dual was presaged by Coach Smith regrettably announcing that three-time 197lb All-American Rocky Elam would miss the rest of the season and that two-time NCAA champ Keegan O’Toole would miss the rest of the month, due to injury.

• Josh Saunders defeated #12 Josh Edmond. Saunders has been filling in for Vince Cornella, who we have yet to see wrestle for Cornell this season and may also unfortunately be lost for the season, though nothing official has been announced yet. 
• #2 Meyer Shapiro looked otherworldly in his 17-2 dismantling of #24 James Conway. 
• #13 Chris Foca looked as sharp as ever in his 8-1 victory over #8 Cohlton Hawks. 
• Missouri has another tough bout next Sunday against Stanford, while Cornell will be tested by traditional EIWA rival Lehigh on the same day. 

Oklahoma State Continues To Impress

Despite a rare and unexpected forfeit at home at 133, and the absence of Cam Amine and Wyatt Hendrickson, the Cowboys blitzed the Falcons of Air Force. 

• Cam and Wyatt’s backups -- Colin Young and Konner Doucet, respectively -- both won.
• Oklahoma State’s starters at the other seven weights all won by fall of either the tech or pin variety. 
• Wyatt Hendrickson, a commissioned officer in the Air Force, explained before the dual why he would not be competing. 

Come watch some great wrestling Friday at 7 in Gallagher-Iba Arena! pic.twitter.com/dh9hIeEUCJ

— Wyatt Hendrickson (@wyatt_hendrick) January 3, 2025

Ohio State Throttled Oregon State 

No major surprises in this dual but I'd like to highlight another remarkable instance of Sammy Sasso's return to the mat after getting shot. 

𝙍𝙚𝙙𝙚𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙍𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚
Sammy Sasso made his comeback & now he achieves 100 career wins to kick off 2025‼️#GoBucks pic.twitter.com/EV9HTvhslq

— Ohio State Wrestling (@wrestlingbucks) January 5, 2025

West Virginia Pummeled Princeton

We didn't get to see Marc-Anthony McGowan at 125, though he earned a break after wrestling NINE matches at Midlands. We also didn't see the matchup of the Ty-Fighters at 149 as West Virginia’s #3 Ty Watters is still out of the lineup and hasn’t wrestled since mid-November. However, Princeton’s #7 Ty Whalen was in the lineup and picked up a victory over Sammy Hillegas. 

Princeton also notched a solid win in the only ranked matchup of the night when #31 Eligh Rivera defeated #27 Jordan Titus at 141. 

Arms Were Barred Outside Albany

Four teams from four conferences traveled to New York’s capital region for Journeymen’s Armbar, a dual meet round-robin bonanza. 

The results were rather unexpected, as no team finished either winless or undefeated. The results (and unofficial standings) are as follows: 

• Lock Haven 2-1 (beat Binghamton & Columbia)
• Binghamton 2-1 (beat Columbia & Maryland)
• Columbia 1-2 (beat Maryland)
• Maryland 1-2 (beat Lock Haven)

Notable upsets from the Armbar include:

• #29 Will Ebert of Binghamton over #9 Jaxon Smith of Maryland at 184.
• Gavin Hoffman of Lock Haven (he's back!) over #19 Cory Day of Binghamton at 285.
• #16 Braxton Brown of Maryland over #13 Anthony Noto of Lock Haven at 133.

Heavy Metal Matness

New year, same old segment where I compare a D1 wrestling program to a heavy metal band, because someone asked me to do that once and I want to keep doing it because it is fun for me. 

Today, I will compare the Virginia Tech Hokies to Pantera. 

Honestly, there aren't too many things that I can think of that connect Pantera to the Virginia Polytechnical Institute. Pantera is from Texas, so technically both are from the South. So there’s that. 

Virginia Tech’s football team does traditionally run out to Metallica’s Enter Sandman, which rocks, but is also a different heavy metal band.

The backbone of Pantera is, like Van Halen, formed by a brother combo lead guitarist and drummer, in the case the legendary Dimebag Darrell on the six-string on Vinnie Paul behind the kit. Alas, both Dimebag and Vinnie both passed away too soon. 

But they left behind an incredible catalog of kick ass groove metal, with inimitable Phil Anselmo on vocals and Rex Brown on bass. 

The Hokies meanwhile are still in the midst of their golden era, with head coach Tony Robie still building and expanding on the program reviving work done by Kevin Dresser. The Hokies are averaging nearly four All-Americans at every NCAA tournament since 2013, and celebrated their second national champ in program history (Caleb Smith at 149 in 2024) just five years after their first (Mekhi Lewis at 165 in 2019). 

Both Pantera and the Virginia Tech Hokie wrestling program kick ass and I give them both my highest possible recommendation. 

What Would YOU Like To See In This Blog? 

It wouldn’t exist with you so I implore you to provide feedback! 

Send all suggestions, requests, commendations and condemnations to me at [andrew.spey@flosports.tv]. I’m also usually available on Twitter (@speywrestle). News that you'd like to see in this blog is the most appreciated feedback, but proofreading and spell-checking assistance is also welcome! Pobody's nerfect, least of all your humble blogger! 

I truly believe 2025 is going to be our year. Let's really do it.