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PSU wants opponents to adjust styles in Omaha
By: Guy Cipriano
Centre Daily Times
College wrestling has turned into a high-tech game with many Division I coaches and wrestlers scanning hours of DVDs before dual meets and tournaments.
At Penn State, the sport still carries primitive characteristics.
The Nittany Lions didn’t bring a traveling video library or multiple pieces of expensive equipment to Omaha., Neb., where the NCAA Championships begin at noon Thursday.
If coach Cael Sanderson had his way, wrestling Web sites would be blocked from laptops. Instead of studying opponents and brackets, the Nittany Lions are being instructed to worry about themselves this week.
“I have never been big into film,” Sanderson said. “I want to make our opponents adjust to us.”
The philosophy is a change for some Penn State veterans, including junior 125-pounder Brad Pataky, who once studied hours of video.
“I like it,” he said.
“Every match is different. I think having that mindset helps.”
Pataky opens with Oklahoma’s Jarrod Patterson, a freshman he defeated 8-6 with a third-period reversal during the Virginia Duals. Patterson enters the tournament seeded ninth while Pataky is unseeded after finishing fourth at the Big Ten Championships. Pataky and Patterson met on Jan. 9.
“It’s pretty much just a new match,” Pataky said.
The majority of Penn State’s scouting comes from memory. Senior David Erwin, for example, has faced 14 of the 33 wrestlers in the 184-pound bracket.
The 11th-seeded Erwin is 10-6 against NCAA qualifiers and opens his first NCAA tournament against Oklahoma’s Eric Schmditke, a wrestler he defeated 9-3 at the Virginia Duals.
“I have wrestled the guys at the top,” he said. “I feel like I’m right there with them, just a couple of matches didn’t quite go my way. I made some mistakes. Hopefully, I have learned from them and go back and improve on them.”
Erwin said he hasn’t studied his bracket “at all.” Any major improvement he shows this week will come from work in the practice room, not because of what he analyzed on a television or computer monitor.
“I have watched some video,” he said. “But a lot of it is just thinking about it a lot and what I have to work on and what I need to do to win.”
Unless he’s bluffing, senior Cyler Sanderson acts like his older brother. The senior is seeded fourth at 157 behind three wrestlers he faced earlier this season: Harvard’s J.P. O’Connor, Boise State’s Adam Hall and Virginia Tech’s Jesse Dong.
Cyler’s weight class experienced a major change when defending champion Jordan Burroughs of Nebraska went down with an injury last fall. Dustin Schlatter, another former NCAA champion, enters this week hobbled and seeded sixth after weighing-in but not wrestling in the Big Ten Championships.
Still, Cyler said his focus hasn’t drifted from his own preparations. He opens the tournament against Northern Illinois’ Bryan Deutsch.
“You can’t spend too much time worrying about who you are going to wrestle and when you are going to wrestle because you can only take one match at a time,” he said. “I have one match right now and that’s my first-round match and that’s all I can think about. When that one is over, I will start thinking about what’s next.
Cyler’s brother understands how to handle an NCAA tournament. Cael won four individual titles at Iowa State.
Cael said it’s important knowing an opponents’ go-to shots and trick moves. But he doesn’t see a need for advanced scouting.
“It’s a mistake to focus more on your opponents,” Cael said. “We need to focus on ourselves and being the best that we can be. Ultimately, if you are going to be a national champion, you need to go out there and think and train like a national champion, and a national champion needs to score points.”
Pataky and Erwin aren’t the only Nittany Lions opening with familiar opponents. Senior Dan Vallimont faces Virginia Tech’s Matt Epperly at 165
while heavyweight Cameron Wade gets Lehigh’s Zach Rey. Vallimont edged Epperly 4-3 at the Virginia Duals while Wade opened 2009-10 with a 5-2 loss to the third-seeded Rey.
Sophomore Frank Molinaro receives a new opponent in Binghamton’s Donald Vinson. But the fifth-seeded Molinaro has faced 11 different 149-pound qualifiers, including the four higher seeds: Ohio State’s Lance Palmer, Iowa’s Brent Metcalf, Oklahoma’s Kyle Terry and Wisconsin’s Kyle Ruschell.
Tags: Brad Pataky, Cael Sanderson, Cameron Wade, Cyler Sanderson, Dan Vallimont, David Erwin, Frank Molinaro
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