Nebraska Huskers Crush Title Contenders!
Nebraska set a program record with five conference finalists last weekend in a rugged Big Ten Tournament, placing third behind Penn State and Ohio State in the team race. “The Big Ten is the toughest wrestling conference, and nobody can really dispute that,” Husker coach Mark Manning said Thursday afternoon. “To get five guys in the finals is really something.
” Despite the impressive weekend, perception of Nebraska’s tournament was marred by its 0-5 record in the finals, dropping four matches to #1 seeds. Antrell Taylor, Christopher Minto and Camden McDanel each lost to Nittany Lion wrestlers in front of a raucous crowd at Bryce Jordan Center. “Out of those five matches, we wrestled three Penn State guys, and the environment we wrestled in was even more hostile than the dual meet,” Manning said.
“I thought our guys did a really good job, and I think they’re going to be battle-tested. Antrell Taylor wrestling PJ Duke at Penn State twice, but he never wrestled on our ground — we’ve always had to wrestle in his environment and his comfort zone. It bodes well for our guys who are looking forward to having a little bit more even playing field in Cleveland.
” Speaking of the returning NCAA champion Taylor, he beat Duke in tiebreakers in the dual but dropped a 12-4 major decision in the Big Ten final. “Antrell has already learned a lot from that loss, and we’re going to change it around here in a week,” Manning said. “There’s a lot of really great takeaways (from the weekend) — I thought we wrestled really well.
Was it a good finish and could it have been better? Sure, absolutely. We could have walked out with three Big Ten champs, but we didn’t.
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