Iowa Should Wrestle Both Cash Wilcke And Nelson Brands This Weekend
Iowa Should Wrestle Both Cash Wilcke And Nelson Brands This Weekend
Why Tom Brands and the Iowa Hawkeyes should continue to wrestle both Cash Wilcke and Nelson Brands until their 184 pound starting spot is settled.
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The Iowa Hawkeyes are in a great position to win their first team title in a decade, but there's still some things unsettled at 184.
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After Midlands ended, Tom Brands said, "We've got three options there," referring to fifth year senior Cash Wilcke, redshirt freshman Nelson Brands, and Abe Assad, who is currently redshirting.
Assad, a true freshman out of Glenbard North in Illinois, performed the best at Midlands after making the finals. His biggest win there was over #9 Tanner Harvey of American in the quarters, but he also came in with losses to Kendrick Jones of Grand View and Julien Broderson of Iowa State.
Even with him making the finals, pulling Assad's shirt seems to be the least likely option. They'll have two opportunities this weekend to do so, as the Hawkeyes travel to Bloomington to face Indiana on Friday night and then drive to West Lafayette for their dual against Purdue on Sunday evening.
The guy everyone expected to be the starter coming into the season is Wiclke, who finished third at Midlands. He began the preseason ranked eleventh, and picked up a 3-2 tiebreaker win over Assad in Iowa's unofficial wrestle-off/ranking match back in November.
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Wilcke is 11-2 on the year, with both losses coming to Wisconsin's Johnny Sebastian. But he beat Brands 4-2 in the bloodround at Midlands, giving him wins over both of the other options for the Black & Gold. Last year, he beat Purdue starter Max Lyon 8-3 at Big Tens and 12-4 in the dual. Back in February of 2017, Wilcke beat Indiana starter Jakob Hinz 3-2 when both were up at 197.
Then there is Nelson Brands, who started the first two duals and had wins over Matt Waddell and Sammy Colbray, the latter of whom beat Wilcke last season. But then he lost to Travis Stefanik in the Princeton dual, who Assad beat at Midlands.
Brands went 2-2 at the Sears Centre, losing to Zac Braunagel in the quarters; Braunagel would go on to fall to both Assad and Wilcke. That brought him to 4-3 overall this season.
If I'm on the Hawkeye coaching staff, I would put Nelson in one match and Cash the other match this weekend. Nelson's gas tank has won him a few matches already, but the size disadvantage is going to be a persistent issue. Wilcke put up 57 points at Midlands, but half of those came in two matches, so they still need him to open up a little more offensively.
This is maybe the last weekend they can split time too, with seven duals remaining. Which means the rest of the way, they should probably stick with one guy, not only for consistency and continuity, but to try to get RPI numbers for NCAA seeding purposes.
Be on the lookout for Iowa's match notes for this weekend, which will almost definitely feature both guys as probables for 184. The Hawkeyes will have two guys ranked #1 and three ranked #2, but this one last weight needs to be determined over the course of the Big Ten dual schedule.