The old saying that goes “There’s no place like home,” proved to be false as the No. 20 Badgers were wrestled to the mat by their guests. Coming off of a recent four-match road trip that saw Wisconsin stumble to a 1-3 start in the Big Ten, UW hoped to take advantage of its home mat when the Badgers returned to the Field House to face the No. 8 Fighting Illini. The University of Illinois had different plans, however, and handed UW its third-straight conference loss, 29-7.
When asked what he thought the difference was in the meet, UW head coach Barry Davis responded, “There were four close matches, and [the Illini] won every one of them. It could have swung either way. If you’re going to win matches and be successful as a team, you have to win the close matches, and that’s something that we just didn’t do. We’ve got to turn that around a little bit.”
Indeed, UW’s losses in the 133-, 141-, 149- and 197-pound weight classes were by a combined 7 points, with the matches at 133 and 141 going into overtime.
The Badgers gave up 23 unanswered points to the Illini to start the match but finally got on the scoreboard when heavyweight Justin Staebler won by major decision over his opponent, 9-0. By this point, however, UW had needed to pin the remaining four Illinois wrestlers to pull off the upset. Nevertheless, the Badgers finished strong with Tony Black, winning at 125, and Tom Clum and Tyler Loudon taking their opponents to overtime before eventually losing the decision.
Davis pointed to the performance of Tony Black as being something to build on while also commenting on his two redshirt freshmen, Tom Clum and Ed Gutnik. “That was a good match for Tony,” Davis said. “He stayed in there wrestling pretty tough and got a lot more offense. The other guys deserve credit too. Clum wrestled well, but he just needs to turn the corner. Both he and Ed had opportunities to win, and they just didn’t pull it off. When it’s that close, you’ve got to step it up and score, but they just couldn’t do it.”
Despite the lopsided score, the home crowd had plenty of support to offer the Badgers. The gym was loudest for Black’s match; many felt the officiating was unfair. In what looked to be a pin for Black, the official awarded no points. Needless to say, the crowd let him know about it as a chorus of boos rained down.
“You’ve got to have those calls,” Davis said. “No one’s perfect, though, so when you get a call like that, you try to overcome it. Sometimes they go both ways, and they didn’t swing our way tonight, and even if those occur, you’ve still got to make your own breaks. We had a chance, and we just didn’t come away with that one.”
UW has plenty to build on, though, since this was only the beginning of a four-match home stand. The Badgers hope the cozy confines of the Field House will prepare them for the upcoming Big Ten championships to be held there March 8-9. Regardless of the 1-4 conference record, Davis feels his team is on the upswing.
“We’re right there; we’re just not over the hump yet,” Davis said. “We’ve just got to do a little bit more in certain areas. We’ve got four weeks to go yet, and a lot of things could change.”
Next up for Wisconsin is Purdue this Friday at the Field House.