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CRIMSON MAT NEWS, 2/21/06
We finished up our dual meet season on the road against
Cornell on Friday night before we traveled to NY City
to take on Columbia and Duke. Its always a difficult
trip but we have been wrestling well so we were excited
to head north. We had some good bouts as we took 3
matches and lost another in overtime and another by
1 point. Louis Caputo (184) got the match started
at Cornell with the #3 wrestler in the country and
returning All-American. Caputo lost to this same wrestler
earlier in the season but he surely closed the gap,
dropping a narrow 3-2 decision. He’s very close!
Robbie Preston also dropped a close decision in overtime
when he was called for fleeing the mat 2 times, to
lose 2-1. Tri-Captains, Bode Ogunwole (hwt) and Max
Meltzer (141) sparked the team with wins as they both
remained undefeated in dual meet competition, but
the highlight came at 157 when freshman Andrew Flanagan
defeated #6 ranked (and 3-time All-American) Dustin
Manotti from Cornell in a 13-12 thriller. Flanagan
is currently riding a 10 match winning streak to finish
the regular season. The team wrestled well without
Tri-captain, Mike Baria who was still suffering from
a sickness that laid him up all week.
Click
here for results: http://gocrimson.collegesports.com/sports/m-wrestl/recaps/021806aac.html
We headed into Columbia hoping to knock off a team
on the rise. This was a very highly contested fight
as both teams slugged it out. We juggled the lineup
a bit as Bobby Latessa (149) bumped up to 157 for
a big win and Andrew Flanagan (157) bumped up to 165
for another big win. It paid off as we got more wins
from Bode, Meltzer and Preston to solidify the victory,
29-16!
The
Duke match was one of the oddest matches I have witnessed.
Two of our wrestlers (Meltzer and Wes Walker) were
beating their opponent and were both called for defensive
pins. Meltzer was winning by 10 points and was turning
his opponent again for more points and the referee
decided to slap the mat in the favor of the Duke wrestler.
So after the shock wore off of that one, the same
exact thing happened at 174 with Walker. Defensive
falls are extremely rare, but it did happen twice
in one match. It can’t take away from the way
this team competed this weekend as we gear up for
the EIWA Tournament. The team is really peaking at
the right time and looked very good against all 3
teams this weekend. The tournaments should be interesting.
Click
here for results: http://gocrimson.collegesports.com/sports/m-wrestl/recaps/021806aad.html
EIWA’s
EIWA’s
will be held at Lehigh University on Saturday, March
4-5. The website for the tournament can be found at
http://www.lehighsports.com/info/eiwas.asp with all
times and dates. For tickets, please call (610) 7LU-GAME
and mention you are from Harvard so you can sit in
our block.
NCAA’s
The
NCAA tournament will be held in Oklahoma City, OK
on March 16-18. Information on the tournament can
be found at http://www.okcallsports.org/ncaawrestling/.
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