As reliable as the flood of fathers that pours into Athens each Dads Weekend, the Bobcats count on their top-five wrestlers for wins in every match.
Redshirt sophomore Gabe Ramos, senior Germane Lindsey, redshirt junior Nick Purdue, senior Erik Schuth and redshirt freshman Jeremy Johnson have accounted for 62 percent of the Bobcats' individual dual meet wins and the same amount of their bonus-point victories this season.
I think if you look at most teams
they've got four or five guys they count on every single time coach Joel Greenlee said. And if you can sneak one or two wins out of those other four or five guys you win the dual.
Five out of 10 starters might not seem like a great portion of wrestlers who consistently win, but Greenlee said it's been that way since he first came to Athens.
And if Ohio can send those five wrestlers to the NCAA Championships in March - the same number that went last season - then the 2010-11 season would be a big success.
There's a lot of teams out there that would love to have those five guys
said the 14th-year coach.
Greenlee said the reason behind this pattern is that many teams' best wrestlers are usually upperclassmen. But Johnson and Ramos are respectively in their first and second years of college wrestling.
Greenlee added that redshirt freshman Ryan Garringer, freshman Brad Squire and sophomore Jake Wojcik could soon become as dependable as the top quintet.
When we're healthy
we've got eight guys we're counting on
Greenlee said with a laugh.
Killer instinct
Greenlee chided the team during practice yesterday for not competing with enough intensity.
We've got a couple guys that are beat up
Greenlee said. We're over there patting them on the back and (saying)
'Are you okay?' instead of
'Central Michigan is not going to do that for you
so you might as well get used to it.'
Greenlee said he wants the Bobcats to start taking advantage of what he called mutual breaks, or moments during matches when wrestlers let their guard down. He cited Lindsey and Purdue as opportunistic wrestlers.
If we take advantage of those (mutual breaks)
we're gonna win some matches we're not supposed to. We're gonna get some takedowns at the edge of the mat we're not supposed to
