Are they willing to hire a good middle weight coach for their athletes? Are they willing to hire coaches who think outside the box and aren’t Iowa guys? I have no doubt about their loyalty. I have doubts about their ability to adapt.
How far beyond has Iowa fallen?
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I promise you if you call the office ask to speak to Tom he will answer your questions sincerely.
And 65 lbr. The only thing worse than Iowa Wrestling is the Iowa fans.
Iowa wrestling > your version of Iowa wrestling and Iowa fans > your version of Iowa fans.
We talkin’ Mazzerati Mitch Messinbrink here??? If so go give yourself a swirly.
sure...last year van ness couldn't finish on murin and that's why he lost to him 3 times
i don't even know what we're arguing about here
plenty of PSU guys (their non hammers) aren't that strong their first few years...then by their 3 and 4th years they don't have issues with strength...which seems to be the case for most other teams
the only reason I even responded up too was because someone said PSU guys are bigger (not stronger) than everyone else...and that is not the case
I know everyone hates Askren here but he’s one hell of a coach and specializes in scrambling. I’d personally love to see him on staff.
Guy asked if KD had ISU in a better place than Iowa. I answered. Comparing success v. Big 12 competition with success v. B1G competition is nonsense. If this Iowa team was wrestling in the Big 12 tournament right now we'd probably have 6 finalists.
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Agreed. It’s not been talked about enough. They’re bigger than us at almost every weight. Caliendo looks tiny compared to Mesenbrink. Franek looks tiny compared to Haines. And technique discrepancies aside, we’re getting horsed around physically.
Exactly.
But I'm sure it's because they have better technique/scrambling ability...............
The whole staff needs to be replaced
I was thinking Franek looked like Frodo compared to Haines during their match.
You’d be wrong. I was sitting two rows behind Mitch Messenbrink’s parents yesterday. He stopped by after his semi win. He looks like an in shape guy in his late teens or early 20s. Not much different from any other guy who works hard at his height.
Yes he is leaning muscular but he’s only 165 pounds for God sake. That’s not huge.
Beau Bartlett, we actually sat with his dad and his dad’s friend for two hours and talked between sessions. He mentioned a lot about the program at Penn State, how was son was recruited, his background, and wrestling and coaching and a lot of other things. He’s very nice and interesting fellow.
Isn’t that big of a guy, he might be about 5 foot five and 141 pounds he appears to be pretty stout, but he’s not super ripped. I was lien as any kind of PSU team I can’t wait for lifting meets, some guys tend to be able to get rather lean and retain a lot of their muscle mass And you will find out it’s not unusual for high-level athletes that are fast twitch .
Look at Penn State heavyweight, he’s a big muscular looking guy, but nothing unusual that you wouldn’t see in D1 football. I think Greg is about 6’3” 245 or 50. Tell me how uncommon that is in the D1 football world?
Then, last week we have good noodle arms Bo Nickal. If you’re going by muscularity and vascularity and trying to determine if that makes a good wrestler or a great wrestler or he’s not gonna be at the top of your list.
PSU gets better wrestlers and coaching better, it is that simple
I more or less agree with and do respect the positive things you said about TNT but they are also as stubborn as the most stubborn mule around and there have been shortcomings, recruiting being a huge one, in that if they were self scouted and dealt with could have made a difference in where things sit today vs the psu monster. They needed to be dealt with when the monster was an infant because now it's too late. The biggest difference between their staff and ours is they self scout a lot and are completely open to make whatever changes and adjustments to any and all aspects of the program they feel will lead to better performance and more winning while we like our guys and like what we do.
Don't be a clown. Your rebuttal to a wrestler looking huge is how small they look in public? Phil Keddy looked jacked as hell I stood by him once and was shocked how small he seemed compared to what you see on TV. 80% of wrestlers are going to look small in the general public.
Iowa has one, and like you say, Brooks will score bonus pts against him. PSU has 7 finalists. Without Starrocci.
What surprises me is the number of wrestlers who did not come to Iowa that say they grew up huge Iowa wrestling fans and always wanted to wrestle at Iowa.... Then the question turns to "Why did the Iowa staff miss on these guys?" I know Penn State is getting all the really top-level guys right now but there are still a lot of other recruits out there that are way up the rankings from what we are getting... It just feels like we should be doing way, way better at recruiting then what we are... Oh, I know we are landing some top-level guys here and there but not with enough consistency and regularity to challenge Penn State.. I know other schools have great programs as well but if they are good enough to recruit over Iowa given our history then something needs to change at the coaching level...
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If Sanderson is such a great coach why did he not have the same success at ISU? It took him going to a place where the money was, to be able to get the best recruits. In a time where athletes are going to lesser programs to get starting spots, multiple highly ranked kids waiting for their turn… It really isn’t all that difficult. We’re in the NIL era.
TNT have alienated themselves from a lot of recruits. The days of hard in your face coaching is a thing of the past. Iowa as a program is a blue blood but the staff is turning away recruits. Not saying they are bad ppl but the constant screaming, in every refs and opposing coaches faces is not a good look. Then of course there’s the nonstop yearly injuries, lack of development, and hwc that’s just glorified graduated hawks.
Tom is a living legend in this state but it is hard not to agree with you... From an outside perspective Iowa does not look like the best option to go to when the Head Coach sits in a press conference and just gives a death stare to the camera and when asked a question all he says is "Where moving on, we love our guys and we're looking forward" and then sits there all smug, looking angry and pissed off like a 4-year old who just got in trouble for crapping his pants. As the face of the program he has to show why Iowa is the best place to come to and his demeanor does not reflect that a lot of the time. If the Coach seems unhappy all of the time and he looks like he hates being at Iowa why the heck would any kid want to come here?
I don’t understand why they don’t see that. It gets tough defending some of the stuff he says and does. I don’t have a son but if I did idk that I’d want him wrestling for someone like that.
I believe Cael Sanderson had ISU as high as #2 in the rankings during his time coaching Iowa State. David Taylor actually committed to Iowa State and when Sanderson left for PSU, Taylor followed him there... He did a Great job while in Ames..
Seriously, he’s a 165 lb er wrestling other 165 ers. It’s why they have weight classes. Of course he’s muscular for his weight because that’s what you’d want. Maximum horsepower for weight.
But the kid might just be better than anyone else now because he’s better. And genetics will obviously play a part . Wrestling is the one sport where a great athlete of a smaller stature can compete due to the weight class limits .
Pennsylvania isn’t Iowa.
At the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding. What Brands is doing, and has been doing for years, simply isn’t working. We don’t seem to develop, we struggle to consistently get elite prospects, we’re always injured, we are afraid to score points, we simply aren’t adapted to modern college wrestling. Tom can say he knows what he’s up against, and how he’s “changed” philosophy, but if he truly does we wouldn’t be the exact same team year in and year out. That’s what people are most frustrated by. See the game, be the game.
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Sanderson never had the powerhouse recruiting at Iowa State like he does at Penn State. Without top 10 pound for pound recruits at virtually every weight, he never won a team championship in his six years at Iowa State.
It’s really that simple. TNT are no more deficient in coaching then Ohio State, Oklahoma State, Michigan, Minnesota, Cornell, or other traditional power houses it’s just that Penn State has outdistanced everyone when it comes to recruiting.
Give Iowa 10 recruits like Spencer Lee, and we could all marvel at how great of coaches the brands are. But we don’t get many recruits like Spencer Lee, he was unique.
Penn State, however, does. Look at Mesenbrink - another true fr, top 10 p4p, U17 World gold medalist, who will place high in ncaa, and will rack up plenty of point in his 4 yr career.
Iowa just doesn’t match the recruits that Psu gets. No one does. Until recruiting improves significantly, we’ll be battling for 2nd place.
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What a dumb post. Messenbrink isn't huge because he only wrestles at 165 lbs? You realize "huge" is in relation to their opponents. Messenbrink is huge compared to Caliendo.
You sitting two rows behind his parents means **** all. I saw the match in high definition on TV. Both yesterday and in the dual. Messenbrink is bigger and stronger than Caliendo.
He's longer, he has a stronger core/hips. He absolutely horsed Caliendo and not just because he out classes him technically.
Beau looks stronger than Real. Haines looks stronger and bigger than Franek.
Kerk is one of the strongest wrestlers in D1 this year. Why in the **** are you comparing Kerk to D1 football players? We're comparing him to his wrestling opponents in his weight class. He's bigger and stronger than the majority of his opponents.
It’s not just recruiting though. The Bull was certainly capable of winning a title at Iowa. He had his victories over Vincenzo Joseph, but Joseph is a 2 time champ and 3 time finalist and Bull isn’t. Why? 2021 finals night made it clear, even though we won the tournament, that PSU coaching is on another level.
At least we’re getting this thread out of the way before nationals this year. That should save us some time in a few weeks.
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That was literally the discussion. And you came in telling people they're wrong for saying he's big for the weight. We're comparing apples to apples - e.g. wrestlers competing against each other at the same weight.
He's both bigger than average for the weight and certainly bigger than Caliendo, and also technically better than almost everyone if not everyone at the weight. That's a deadly combination.
Odd that we have to have the same thread, year after year though…right?
We didn’t have this thread two years ago.
I understand the frustration. There are things I’d like to see change. Recruiting for one, we have to be more active and aggressive with the top guys. When you are being negatively recruited against you have to beat them to the punch. We should always have young light weight studs knocking down our door.
I’d also like to see a Nolf like coach on the staff. Someone that’s young enough to roll with our middleweights and has a variety of attacks.
Usually with the exact same points too. People have been underwhelmed with M* on staff for a long time. The fact that he was credited with getting the Young Guns kids to Iowa bought him some grace with fans, although it wasn’t deserved IMO. Gobblin says we don’t have the money, but M* is a 3rd assistant making around 130k right now. This seems insane to me.
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