A week after suffering a heartbreaking loss, senior Blake Stauffer got redemption - he notched his 100th collegiate win.
In doing so, he helped ASU wrestling get the 24-12 victory over Cal Poly.
“As a top-five guy in the country, when there’s 80 guys in the country, you’re better than 70 of them and those are easy matches, you need the hard tough matches to find out where you’re at,” head coach Zeke Jones said of Stauffer. “When you win it validates your training, when you lose, you say, oh man, I gotta make some corrections.”
Stauffer definitely made some corrections tonight, as he looked like a top-10 wrestler in the country and got the easy win over Mitch Woods, 16-3.
“I think he’s still hesitant, he needs to push himself harder in his matches,” Jones said.
Another shining star is junior Dalton Brady.
He is rebounding from an injury and has come back in full-force. During his current hot streak, he has won in impressive fashion, including winning the championship in his weight class at the Edinboro Open last week.
Brady showed no mercy on Saturday, smashing Glenn Farina 23-11. Brady constantly took down Farina, and just about all of Farina’s points came on escapes, when Brady let him go. It was one of his best outings of the season.
“Anytime you’re scoring twenty-something points your confidence is going to be high,” Jones said. “Also, conditioning plays a huge factor too.”
After Brady, sophomore Robbie Mathers brought his typical swagger out to the mat. He was throwing his opponent around during the whole match to eventually earn a major victory for his team.
This is the first time since the Edinboro Open that the audience has gotten to see who will start at the 149-pound weight class.
“Generally we let the kids sort this stuff out,” head coach Zeke Jones said of deciding who the wrestler at 149 will be. “This stuff usually always sorts itself out.”
At the Edinboro Open, sophomore Christian Pagdilao and senior Matt Kraus went up against each other in the quarterfinals and it turned out to be an epic duel. The two Sun Devils battled each other like it was a scrum at practice. Kraus eventually got the win in overtime and he went on to win the championship in his weight class.
So after last week’s win, Kraus got the nod at 149 tonight against Cal. Poly. Kraus took an 8-2 victory over Jacob Leon.
ASU went into the second-to-last match of the night with a 21-6 lead over Cal. Poly, and with the 197-pound weight class up, senior Josh DaSilveira was supposed to come out to the mat for the Sun Devils, but instead, ASU forfeited the match and gave the Mustangs six points.
“It was a variety of reasons (why DaSilveira wasn’t out there),” Jones said.
It didn’t matter much though. ASU had the match in-hand and they also have a match tomorrow night against CSU Bakersfield, and they most likely wanted to save DaSilveira for that matchup. CSU Bakersfield is currently the No. 25 team in the nation.
Related Links:
Wrestling recovering after falling on hard times
ASU wrestling gets five first-place finishes in Pennsylvania
Reach the reporter at benjamin.a.flores@asu.edu or follow @benflores21 on Twitter.
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