Penn State wrestling destroys everybody, and even a historically great program like Iowa is no exception.
Iowa was the No. 4 team in the country, had home mat advantage, and every wrestling fan knew it was going to lose decisively.
That’s how good Penn State is, and Iowa coach Tom Brands summed up the night as well as anybody could have in his post-dual meet press conference.
“That’s unlike any dual that I’ve been in since I’ve been the coach here,” Brands said. “We’ve been beat up before, but not like that.”
Iowa lost 32-3, the worst it’s ever been beaten in the history of Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
‘WE HAVE THE RIGHT GUYS TO DO THE JOB’
It’s not that Iowa is a bad team. Not by a long shot. It’s a program that most would love to be, and Brands knows there’s a lot of talent there.
“I think that we have the right guys to do the job,” he said.
But Brands also acknowledged the harsh reality.
“There is a gap between Iowa and Penn State,” he said, “and that’s my job, the program’s job, the coach’s job, to close that gap and overcome. We have the right guys.”
“All the things that I said about how you get yourself back into a match if things aren’t going your way. You know right away in this sport. You know when the whistle blows, ‘hey, I have to wake up.’ You know right away, and you have to make those adjustments. You have to.”
Brands pointed out that Iowa lost a few matches that could have gone the other way.
Of the nine bouts Iowa lost, five were decided by three points or fewer.
For Brands, Iowa had a hard time keeping the necessary drive for a full seven-minute match.
“We were wrestling really, really hard for 35 seconds in the third period at the end, and you have to do that for the entire match,” he said. “When you’re doing that for the entire match, you will have things go your way.”
Another thing that summed up how the night went is that when Brands was finishing up giving what was largely a positive answer about Nasir Bailey, who beat Braeden Davis at 141, he referred to him as “the lone winner.”
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE
Brands made it clear that Iowa has “the right guys.”
So what’s the difference between Brands’ program and Cael Sanderson’s?
“Penn State comes with a style where they’re hustling,” Brands said, “and they wrestle hard, and they’re wrestling to score points, and that’s the gap.”
Brands then point out that by the time Angelo Ferrari (184) and Ben Kueter (Heavyweight) wrestled their matches, they had already seen several of their teammates lose.
Both ended up losing close bouts to Rocco Welsh and Cole Mirasola, respectively.
Brands made it clear that it all begins with the boss.
“It starts right here,” Brands said. “It starts right here.”
