CHROMEBIRD

The "dairy air" as we called it...

I thought it was foolish for Max Dean to bail, but he seems very very satisfied with his decision. Gave some great interviews after his last match of the tournament. I'm happy for him.

The article that @Tigerfan shared is quite enlightening. I respect Jesuroga's choice to go after his dream of becoming a SEAL but it sucks that making it through BUDS is almost arbitrary and Navy careers can bottom out from those who don't make it through the program. That's a big roll of the dice.

Dunno if criteria would work out in folk because of the scoring system. It would create a culture of cheap tilts for 4.

Joel. Good wrestler, but it remains to be seen if he's "Iowa Good" and can crack the lineup.

I literally couldn't eat anything for half a day after those drives

Don't know if it's across the board or just Spencer, but he said on a podcast that he doesn't watch tape or game plan for anyone. He just goes out and wrestles, and it usually works. Tony Ramos and Gilman have also said they were shocked when they left Iowa and saw how comparatively little live wrestling other programs do. Tony said they do drill at Iowa but the majority of practice time, at least when they were with the Hawks, was live goes, conditioning, and strength training. Said Coleman Scott spends a lot more time with drilling and instruction and less time live wrestling. Gilman said similar, that there's a lot of "just rolling around" in the PSU room. The brutal practices worked for Gable, but I think wrestling has changed a lot since then and the spaghetti wrestling and scrambling today leads to more injuries IMO.

It's true, I've driven from Denver to Iowa and back a few times and there's a brutal stretch from Northern Colorado to the Nebraska border that smells really really bad. Heard it's because of the mega feedlots there. Even with the windows up and A/C on it was unbearable.

Ramos did match up well with Lee, but a big part of that is his preparation and game planning. Ramos talked about how Spencer lived in his head every day and how much time he and his coaches spent watching tape and working through situational strategies. Similarly, Brands and the coaches deserve some of the blame for not game planning for Ramos and giving Lee the best chance at winning. We are talking about a kid who took Spencer down multiple times before and even got swipes. That was lazy coaching to not be ready, especially if they knew Spencer was wrestling with an injury.

Exactly, they're considerations and not defined criteria. If that's the way the voters like it, that's fine. Just stop calling it "criteria" and making it sound like an objective, quantitatively earned award and not a popularity contest.

The thing that kills me is how they keep calling it the Hodge Award criteria when they are actually just loose guidelines. The voters haven't strictly followed the criteria for years, they're more like suggestions. If the award was actually based on a series of defined criteria and metrics then Hodge winners could be easily determined by an algorithm (not that I want to go there) rather than the subjective whims of the voters.

Didn't he pretty much say that NCAA titles are cool but he's bored smacking college kids around? He said D1 titles aren't the apex of wrestling and talked about winning Olympic gold as his next goal. It doesn't sound like he feels challenged at all with college wrestling.

Can confirm that height is not a limiting factor, surprisingly.

Seems that the problem would correct itself if refs were willing to call stalling.

I don't understand why they did this. Isn't the finalist pool usually around 5 or so candidates?

Has Carstar ever wrestled IMar?

Sounds familiar... Did you ever compete shirtless in tights and a Black Tom?

Unlimited SV until someone scores. Ref encourages action and does not hesitate to call stalling.

You gotta give him some time to cope and move on. I'm sure he'll tell us when he's ready.

The NCAA could pass a bylaw to eliminate ORS if they wanted to. It would just be an incredibly stupid move, one that goes against their mission, and would trigger a sh*tstorm because it would very likely have to apply to other sports as well.

I feel like the best thing the other programs could do is to respect Starocci, fawn over him next season, give him a lot of positive attention. He wrestles best when he has a chip on his shoulder and people doubt him. Like Donnell Washington or the way some fans talked back when he was competitive with Kemdawg. I give him a better chance at winning his 4th if Washington bumps back up to 184 with him, lol

Alirez gets extra credit for his post match interview at NCAAs

I knew this was the place to ask! I'll take it all, even if it's just interesting history or backstories of women's programs. Or who their versions of Iowa and Okla St are.

One year ago, a lotta people thought RBY would beat Fix again and coast to another title.

I think I heard earlier this week that Tony Cassiopi's sister is going to wrestle at Iowa which is great. For those of us who don't follow Womens College Wrestling what's the best place to get up to speed on the programs? I always hear Simon Fraser, King College, and maybe a few others attached to the names of Junior and Senior freestylers but there are a lot of programs on that list that I'm unfamiliar with.