Have to respectfully disagree. Toughness, if nothing else, is what gets him to the top echelon of his weight class. Really tough to score on Brandon or beat him. He doesn't have much of an offensive arsenal most of the time...yet nobody else but Zain could beat him last year. As we see, a lot of guys have down nights, get beat by lesser guys...it happens. But you can't really say that about Brandon, except for maybe CJ Cobb. Speaking of, he lost in the second round as a freshman at the NCAAs and was able to come back and get fourth on a nice little run through the consolation bracket. As a freshman, that was pretty impressive. If you are looking for things that separate Zain and Brandon...it's confidence and athleticism. This is why I think Brandon needs to get to the point in his head where he believes he can beat Zain, cause that's the only way you can really overcome those deficits.
So yea...I think a guy who has placed fourth and second is pretty dang tough. Here are his losses:
Grothus-First match of his RS freshman year and a teammate
Habat-National finalist
TShirt-Returning champ (Sorensen was 1-2 against him that year)
Houdashelt-Eventual champ
CJ Cobb
*Each loss was by one point except for his 3/4 place match; he lost to TShirt 3-1
Last years two losses against Zain.
