Coming fresh off a 22-10 rout of Northern Illinois, the Bobcats will look to earn consecutive Mid-American Conference victories. Consecutive victories would be nice for Ohio, but the Bobcats are eyeing more.
The “Grudge Match” trophy, a traveling trophy between Ohio and Kent State, is at stake. The Bobcats are looking to reclaim the trophy from the Golden Flashes. It would be the first time since 2014 that the Bobcats would possess the trophy. Kent State has kept it the last two years, defeating Ohio 24-12 in 2015 and 20-15 last season.
While Kent State has a less than impressive mark thus far in the season (2-8, 0-2 MAC), Ohio coach Joel Greenlee disregards the record.
“Throw everything out the door,” Greenlee said. “This is a rivalry, you better be ready to wrestle.”
Kent State's lone pair of victories have come against Cleveland State in November and just recently against The Citadel this past weekend. The Golden Flashes started to have a sort of a snowball effect losing the last seven of their eight duals. Their lowest score differential was three points against UT Chattanooga, a team that Ohio defeated 26-13 just two days before Kent State faced them.
Yet that hasn’t slowed down the young team, last weekend Kent State went down 12-0 early to The Citadel but fought through the adversity winning seven out of 10 matches and ultimately won the dual.
Even though Ohio (5-4, 3-2 MAC), on paper appears to be the better team, Greenlee sees some commonalities between the two squads.
“We’re both in the same boat — they lost some studs,” Greenlee said, referring to seniors Mack McGuire (133 lbs.), Mike DePalma (149 lbs.) and Ian Miller (157 lbs.).
McGuire and Miller both qualified for the annual NCAA Tournament four times in their careers at Kent State with DePalma qualifying three times. DePalma and Miller were also MAC champions in their careers with DePalma winning one championship and Miller winning three.
Ohio also lost some key staples in their line up with multiple seniors graduating including Spartak Chino (157 lbs), Andrew Romanchik (184 lbs) and Phil Wellington (197).
The first match of the “Grudge Match” is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. in Kent, Ohio, this Sunday.
