Blue White Illustrated

108 points, Minnesota was a match or two away from vying for the pole position and will present a challenge at nationals. And then there's four-time defending champion Penn State. The Nittany Lions 5nished 57h at Big Tens with 96.5 team points. With one Big Ten champ in 197- pound Morgan McIntosh and only two others – Jordan Conaway (third at 125) and Matt Brown (second at 174) – 5nishing in the top three, head coach Cael Sanderson is looking for improvement at the national tournament. "I don't think we had a great weekend," Sanderson said. "It'll be a good learning experience, so I can kind of 5gure out what I can do better." While the Big Ten tournament can serve as a measuring stick for the national tour- nament, there will be a lot of additional factors in play in St. Louis, with 33 wrestlers in each bracket compared to the typical 14 at Big Tens. Also, compared to the conference tour- ney, Big Ten teams will have fewer repre- sentatives on their squads. No team qual- i5ed its complete starting lineup, as Ohio State and Iowa each earned eight automatic quali5ers, while Penn State and Minnesota had only seven apiece. But claiming that conference title can help. "Winning the Big Ten is a big con5dence booster for you in the program," Sanderson said before the tournament. "It's a big tournament. It's a big deal." At nationals, however, there are serious suitors from across the country. Cornell is a top-5ve team, and other programs such as Oklahoma State, Iowa State and Edinboro have a host of All-America can- didates. Then there's the non-Big Ten team that has everyone talking: Missouri. The Tigers cruised to the Mid-American Conference tournament title, qualifying all 10 wrestlers, and they also won the NWCA National Dual championship in February, beating Iowa in the 5nal. With three bona 5de national championship contenders in their lineup and a supportive crowd of home-state fans expected to be on hand, Missouri is likely to be in the team race until the very end. Bear in mind, the SEC's BCS streak ended a couple sea- sons ago, too. "We have some powerhouses in the Big Ten, but Missouri has as good a chance as anybody to win the national champi- onship," Sanderson said. "Cornell has a great team. Who else? Who knows? It's whoever scores the most points on that given day. Whether you're the favorite or not the favorite, it doesn't really matter. It's the points you put up." Despite having only seven wrestlers quali5ed, Sanderson is hoping his team can do as much scoring in St. Louis as it did in Columbus. In order to accomplish that goal, the Nittany Lions will have to crown at least one individual champion and equal their total number of placed wrestlers. (Seven wrestlers placed in the top eight, a taller task in St. Louis than it was in Columbus.) He might not have been overjoyed with the team's results at the Big Ten meet, but Sanderson said there was a silver lining in that the competition exposed some weak- nesses that can be 5xed. If the Lions are able to make those improvements, speci5- cally 5nishing takedown attempts and holding onto leads, he said, they could po- tentially improve on their 5nish at Big Tens. "I think we're close, and we've been close throughout the year," Sanderson said. "We're losing by a slim margin. My job as a coach is to 5gure out how to get us over that hump. That's what we're going to try to do." That doesn't mean he's going to push his wrestlers to the physical brink in prepa- ration for NCAAs. If anything, he and his sta6 will take the opposite approach. In previous years, Sanderson dialed back dur- ing the team's postseason practices, and it sounds as though this year will be similar. McIntosh said that he and his teammates will be looking to rest up coming o6 the Big Ten tournament. "I have to give my body time to recover, because [the Big Ten] tournament will break your body down," he said. "I'll just get a lot of rest and work on techniques and try to feel as good as I can when nationals come around." ■

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