goheels1812

You telling me Blue Dragon (or whatever his screen name was on the other board) never joined us over here??

No because I am too (even as a UNC fan). 1 time NC state champion from Sun Valley High School (local to my area) to a national champion. To my knowledge he’s the only 1 time NC state champion to win a national championship. I didn’t care what singlet that guy was wearing, I was going to be rooting for his success.

UNC has huge shoes to fill now that O’Connor won’t be in the room for the first time since 2017. Everything I’ve heard out of the room is that he was the standard setter and a great leader. I think the team as a whole will improve from a disappointing year, but I’m interested to see who will fill the leadership role that’s being left. I’d say overall UNC is trending steadily. Another 3 All Americans in 2024 and Lachlan McNeil continuing to improve (assuming he doesn’t take an ORS) and pushing for a top 3 finish at 141 feels reasonable.

I’ll put in a phone call to the UNC room and let Austin know he needs to step it up because the message board doesn’t have time for underachievers.

It’s best to view @LJB like your crazy old uncle that shows up to Thanksgiving yelling about everything under the sun. He has really good points sometimes, but other times he goes full oldmanyellsatclouds meme. Then once you leave thanksgiving you realize he actually made some good points in there and you sort of start looking forward to next year

I’m still a little disappointed in UNC’s season (losing dual record, first ever dual loss to app state, only 5 qualifiers which is down from 9 a few years ago), but I can’t deny how well Coleman prepares his guys for March. 5/5 wrestled at or above their seeds. Gavin Kane lost his first match and then ran the gauntlet to All-American. Even the most optimistic UNC fan wouldn’t have predicted Lachlan McNeil to place 4th this year. We now have 3 straight years with a wrestler competing Saturday night for a national championship, with 2 wins. UNC continues to average 3 All Americans per season and knocks off guys heavily favored against them in March. It’s a nice little thing going in Chapel Hill.

That’s awesome! This year was the second year in a row I missed the ACC tournament after about 12 years straight of making it after I wrapped up college (young kids have me busy). I’m definitely planning on getting back to going next year. I used to post UNC and ACC previews back on the old board from roughly 2015-2020 before life got busy, but I’m planning to start back this coming October. It doesn’t get a ton of engagement lol, but I try to give the conference a little bit of recognition and interaction on the board sporadically. I got over to this board a little late in the season so I missed a solid chunk of time to talk about ACC guys

Ah nice! I know we are supposed to be bitter rivals, but it’s nice to have other ACC fans on the board. Were you on the past board? I don’t remember your username over there. I know there’s a VT fan on here too that posts occasionally.

Lol. Are you an NC State fan? Not trying to stoke the fire, just curious. To my knowledge we’ve never had an NC State fan on the board. My wife is a State grad so I come halfway in peace.

This was a fun read and really insightful. Thanks for the work you put into it!

When this happens, I heard every starting Penn State wrestler is transferring to Iowa! Again, I’m never going to out my sources. And if I’m wrong it doesn’t matter because it may not happen anyways.

You’re making a bold assumption that I like/support Gable and agreed with what happened there (as far as him coming back)… can you point to where I ever said that? You said the situations were the same. They are not the same. AJ is being charged, Gable wasn’t. All forms of sexual assault are unacceptable in my opinion. The hill you have chosen to die on is “at least it wasn’t as bad as Gable!” That’s fine if you feel that way, but don’t expect everyone to jump right on board with your line of thinking.

AJ was a bad dude and really fun to pull for in March. Every once in a while you see/remember a name that gives you good wrestling memories and he’s one of those guys for me.

Couple things. 1st) the Gable and AJ situations are different. Gable was arrested, but never charged. AJ has been charged with felony sexual battery. 2nd) If (and I want to really emphasize the if here) AJ (or any athlete with similar charges) is convicted of a sexual assault crime against a female then it’s very fair to compare him to Brock Turner when it comes to having a second chance. I want to emphasize AJ is innocent until he’s proven guilty in a court of law. But it’s going to be natural to compare his cases to other collegiate sexual misconduct cases.

For the most part I do agree with this wholeheartedly, but I think some nuance applies. If a kid steals from Walmart, of course they should get a second chance. If a kid gets blackout drunk at 18, pees on a wall, and then vandalizes a car, of course they deserve a second chance. When you start talking about the sexual assault and rape I think you start to get in that nuanced area because someone else is involved. If the allegations are true, the woman in the situation will spend the rest of her life living with what happened. It’s not something she can just get over and move on with life. Did Brock Turner deserve a second chance at swimming after his 6 month sentence? I’d argue he did not.

Just following along here because I’m not an expert in any of these areas, but in your experience how does that usually look when a defendant just lets the judge decide? It seems like that wouldn’t end well most of the time, but again I’m in healthcare so not my forte lol.

Guy was super knowledgeable and a great addition to the board. It’ll be a bummer if he never gets around to this board.

Anyone know is a poster by the username Housebuye made it over from the old board? We used to talk ACC wrestling quite a bit and built up a good rapport. He posted pretty frequently over there so I was surprised I haven’t seen him over here once I finally got around to switching over.

Gavin will be a good one for the next couple of years. He’s been doing a weight class shuffle for the past couple years with Clay Lautt at 174/184. Unfortunately, Lautt got hurt this year and couldn’t finish the season and Kane was doing fine at 184. But I do wonder if Kane goes back to 174 next year. I know 184 isn’t a tough cut for him.

New account that joined 23 hours ago with an ultra troll username. I respect it.

Still one of the most impressive feats in wrestling history for me is Dake bumping up to finish off with 4 by stopping Taylor from his chance at 3. It’s not the exact same scenario, but if KOT does that to Starr he will be on similar badass level to Dake (which is rare company).

Not that I need to justify anything, but I edited and put that there about 2 minutes after I originally posted well over 24 hours ago. I was one of the people saying I didn’t mind Spencer MFF’ing out to 6th and I was hopeful he took the podium. Weird behavior to single me out, but it’s the internet so what can ya do.

I’ll refer you back to my first post on the subject…

I’ll throw out one last AOC tidbit. He was only taken down once all year. It was in the ACC championship against Andonian because the ref missed an AOC takedown and Coleman didn’t throw the brick in time for the refs to review it (he threw the brick but the refs said it was too late). If Coleman gets that brick out in time AOC caps off the season as an undefeated national champion that didn’t surround a single takedown on the season. Just dominance (but I also understand 157 wasn’t a loaded weight class this season).

He did pick down and that’s why Kenny was pissed after the match. It was a weird decision in that moment.