The No. 10 Wisconsin wrestling team will be on the road once
again this weekend as it heads to Cedar Falls, Iowa, to compete against No. 23
Northern Iowa Saturday.
The dual will be the first of the season for the Panthers,
while the Badgers come in with a 4-0 record. Still, keeping NIU’s ranking in
mind, head coach Barry Davis knows not to take this weekend’s match lightly.
"UNI's got a good coach in Brad Penrith," Davis said. "His
guys will be ready. This will be a big match for them, down at UNI. We've just
got to be ready."
Wisconsin enters the dual with seven wrestlers ranked in the
top 20 nationally of their respective weight classes. Among the notables are
No. 3 Craig Henning at 157 pounds, No. 4 Dallas Herbst at 197 pounds and No. 11
Kyle Massey, who wrestles in the heavyweight division.
Northern
Iowa has three ranked grapplers of its own, asC.J. Ettelson is ranked No. 10 at 141 pounds,Moza Fay is No. 5 at 165 pounds andAlex Dolly is No. 16 at 174 pounds.
"The thing with
Northern Iowa is they always wrestle us tough," Massey said. "We're one of
their featured matches every year. So they're always coming out, raring to go
and ready to bring their best game against us."
Wisconsin is coming
off an impressive showing last weekend at the Cliff Keen Invite in Las Vegas.
The Badgers finished fifth out of 50 teams competing, scoring 107.5 team
points. Three of the top five teams at the invite came from the Big Ten, with
Michigan taking the title and Ohio State placing third. Herbst improved his
season record to 13-0 while taking the individual title at 197 pounds. Henning
and Massey also finished well, taking third in their respective weight classes.
"I think I wrestled
well," Herbst said of his first-place performance. "Friday, I wasn't feeling
good. I wrestled well, but I was still feeling tight, not really lose like I
could have been. But going into Saturday I just felt really good. On the mat, I
felt prepared and ready to be there."
This year will be the 36th meeting of the two teams.
Wisconsin leads the overall series 19-16-1. Last year, the Panthers came into
the Field House expecting to win, only to leave empty handed with a 24-10 loss
as the Badgers took seven of the 10 matches.
Once the Badgers return home late Saturday night, they have
a short turnaround as they head to Ohio State Monday for their Big Ten opener.
Despite the fact the core of the Big Ten season is still a month and a half
away, Massey knows that this team builds off the little successes that occur
along the way.
"We had some pretty
successful guys this weekend, but we always have kind of wrestled a little bit
better when we're heading into a dual meet," Massey said.
"It's going to be
nice to kind of change pace back into our dual meet team and get back into the
flow of building off of each other matches because that's when we're at our
best."
