After wrestling some of their best all season, the Wisconsin grapplers are about to face the conference's ultimate test. The Badgers, 9-5-1 overall and 4-3-1 in the Big Ten will travel to Bloomington, Ind., Thursday as they prepare for the Big Ten Championships on Saturday.
Despite some inconsistencies and scoring droughts throughout much of this season, UW head coach Barry Davis likes where his team, who finished fifth last year, is at heading into the championships.
"The last half of the season we've done really well." Davis said. "You know we went 3-1-1, had a chance to go 4-1, [but] we tied Illinois in our last duel 15-15. I think we're picking up at the right time — everybody's healthy, you get to do training periods here, so we're ready to go."
The competition will be fierce as eight of the other 10 teams represented in the championships own a higher ranking than Wisconsin, including Minnesota and Michigan who are No. 1 and 2 in the nation respectively. All 10 wrestlers for Minnesota, Michigan, and Penn State are ranked in the pre-seeds for the championships. Of the 10 grapplers for the Gophers, three of them — 133-pound Mack Reiter, heavyweight Cole Konrad, and Dustin Schlatter (149) — are ranked No. 1 in the pre-seeds and two, Konrad and Schlatter, are No. 1 in the nation.
Indiana's Joe Dubuque (125), Alex Tirapelle (157) of Illinois, and Michigan State's Ryan Churella (165) are also top seeds in both the Big Ten Championships and in the nation. The Badgers have six wrestlers ranked in the pre-seeds and only two, No. 2 Craig Henning (157) and No. 3 Tom Clum (133), are represented in the top three. Yet, coach Davis still believes that his individual wrestlers have a chance whether they are ranked or not.
"Just because everybody's ranked, doesn't mean they're going to place that," Davis said. "If you just go by the rankings, you know, if that's what they're going to place, then you don't need to have a tournament. That's why you have those matches — part of sports is upsets."
Many of the Badger wrestlers have gone throughout the season unranked, but have been overlooked because of missed time due to injury, or seeming to have the innate ability to lose close matches.
"You take example like Kelly Flaherty on at [174] who's not ranked," said Davis. "Here at the beginning of the year, he's in the top 10, but he's been injured the last month. Or a guy like Dallas Herbst, five or six of his matches in the Big Ten were decided by one point.
"Again he's not seeded. But if you find a guy like that, who knows [what could happen]. A guy, he could go out, maybe 0-2, or he could get to the end of the Big Ten finals," Davis added.
Collin Cudd (125) is a prime example of a non-ranked player taking it to his higher seeded opponent. Last year, Cudd wasn't ranked heading into the Big Ten Championships, yet he still managed to reach the NCAA Championships.
Davis stressed that again that it's not about the rankings, it's about experience and that's something that this Wisconsin team has.
"Most of these guys have NCAA experience," Davis stressed. "They've been through Big Tens before — they know what to expect, so hopefully that experience will help pay off."
Of those with experience, five of them are seniors — Clum (133), Flaherty (174), Ed Gutnik (141), Lee Kraemer (197), and Tony Turner (141) — so Davis would really like to see them finish on top in their last chance to wear the Badger red and white.
"[I] definitely want to get all the seniors through," Davis said. "I don't want to leave anybody home, particularly I don't want to leave a senior home at all. It's his last time to wear the Badger uniform [and] you want to see him wearing it as long as possible. For your seniors, you definitely want them to go because this is their last chance at the UW and I want them to go out on top."
