No it would not be crazy but this year it would not have been crazy to think we had finalists at 25, 33 and 41 either. 17 it is not unusual for those on this board to disagree with me but if we look at the end of last year to the end of this year if there was improvement by Picc and Kaid it was small. I agree Picc got better on top but on his feet he may have regressed. With Kaid I was shocked how Ohio St kid dominated from neutral position. Also to tech fall a guy 2 months before and then get majored by that same guy is hard to understand except now that guy made lots of progress. The whole year was disappointing to me even though I knew we would not win but I expected better than we did just about the whole year. By the way I appreciated the information about the new recruit. He is a good wrestler but I hope we did not give him much money( nothing against the new recruit). I think we should split 95% of our money between 15 wrestlers and the rest be walkons or close. Now the walkons if they take over a position like Boyd did then they should get more money. I believe we have to do this to compete for Nationals championships.
After finishing typing this post, I realize it is longgg...
Harley, starting with your 2nd point about recruiting, I agree we need to be very careful about who we target & how much scholarship $ we offer. And absolutely no off years, like our HS class of 2016 might end up, possibly scoring a total of zero points at nationals by the time they graduate. Firepower is needed to win a team title, so that means more $ allocated to fewer wrestlers basically. Maybe the 10 scholarships could be distributed roughly something like 5 guys at 80%-100%, 10 guys at 40%-50%, 10 guys at 5%-15%, and the rest walk-ons that get book money plus have the opportunity to get more if they earn a starting role, make AA, etc.
And I think you're right that someone could have said the same thing about our 125-141 making the finals coming into this year. We had a poor tournament, no getting around it. That's on the wrestlers and the coaches. You can't get the credit if things are good and not take the blame when things are bad. The team certainly knows that better than any of us. But do you really think Picc's neutral game regressed? He took Lee down twice in the first match. Lee is a 3x age level world champion (as great as Daton is, he's only a 2x world champ). You said he wrestled poorly on his feet against Russell in the Edinboro dual (winning on riding time I think). And I agree, he was very cautious against him, but then he took him down twice at nationals. To me, Picc has two areas he needs to improve. The first is he needs to get better on bottom. Even if Lee and Lizak were the two best top wrestlers at 125, he absolutely can't allow himself to get turned. Retherford never turned Anthony Collica that I can recall, Picc can't let Lee turn him. And he has to improve his scrambling, at least to the point of getting a stalemate. That's what did him in against Fausz.
Kaid is even worse than Picc on bottom. It's actually mind boggling that he's been in the room 3 years and gets ridden so easily sometimes. When John Erneste turns you, you've got some work to do. If he doesn't improve on bottom, he's not making the finals at 133 or 141. But he is just fantastic on his feet. To me, he's got to wrestle smart, stay under control, and vary his attacks. He didn't against Wilson (who wrestled out of his mind all tournament) because he was going for the big move stuff and he didn't against Pletcher, who beat him with counter offense stuff. But I really believe Kaid is better than both of them, now he's got to prove it.
