1983 NCAA Wrestling Finals in Oklahoma City
I was there for some great moments but some bad as well.
Sheets Outstanding Wrestler with no offensive pts scored on him and only three escape pts scored against. Defeated #2 wrestler 14-0.
Clar Anderson was our only other champion and I seem to remember that he was the 100th all-time NCAA champ for us.
Monday lost a another tough one to Carr and watching this again I still don't know how Kenny didn't get a takedown at 31:20. I don't remember the exact OB rules at the time, but they looked in.
Matt Skove wrestled well and finished 4th from the 5th seed
Unseeded Leo Baily wrested great and finished 6th beating the #6 seed along the way.
Big, big man Mitch Shelton finished 3rd from the 5th seed losing only to Champ Banach of Iowa 3-1
Amazing disappointment was #1 seed Randy Willingham losing to unseeded John Thorn of ISU and then #8 seed Riley of Iowa in consecutive matches. He was undefeated going into the tournment and had beaten Thorn twice during the season 8-2 and 24-7 in the Big 8. He also beat Riley by a DQ in Iowa; total choke job.
Lynes was also a fairly big disappointment, Seeded #4 he lost his first match and was not pulled into the Cons, so one and out; he did AA the next year.
Mark Perry was only slightly disappointing going 0-1 from unseeded.
Sadly, because of this finish Coach Tommy Chesbro was fired and replaced by Joe Seay who got us a couple national championships but also probation.
I don't know if we would have won if Willingham and Lynes had wrestled to seed, maybe someone else does.
Anyway, this VID is great if only that it is the only full match I've seen of Sheets besides the previous one against Douglas who was always tough for Sheets to turn. My heart almost stopped when Reich hit that Cradle but Mike just muscled through it.
