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ter5nal round, his roller coaster season took another turn. Riding a 13-match win streak, McIntosh drew 10th-seeded Connor Hartmann of Duke with a trip to the semi5nals on the line. But McIntosh surrendered a second- period takedown and was unable to over- come the early de5cit – "I just didn't pull the trigger soon enough, or enough times," McIntosh later said – and fell, 3-2, su6ering his 5rst loss in more than two months. A setback, yes, but not the 5rst. He had been forced to compartmentalize before; he could do it again. "It hurts to take a loss like that," he said. "You know you're not getting on top of the podium this year, but I've learned to put it in the past and not dwell on it and not think about what could've been and what could've happened or what I could've done. You take away a lesson to learn from it, but not dwell on it and have negative thoughts in your head, be- cause that's going to really bring you down when you need to step up and wrestle your best." Which is exactly what McIntosh did next. He was victorious in his next four bouts, including a 3-1 consolation win over returning NCAA champ J'Den Cox of Missouri and a 12-7 victory over Min- nesota's Scott Schiller in the match for third place. In all, McIntosh finished his junior season by winning 18 of his final 19 matches, including the last four in a row. "One of the hardest things to do is find the motivation to wrestle after you take a loss and you can't win the title anymore, but you have a team that's counting on you, so you've just got to do what you've got to do and take one match at a time and get back," McIntosh said. "It feels good to make it to the third-place match and get a big win like that. I'm just grateful for the opportunity to be here." Because a couple weeks earlier, when he 5rst learned of his mother's condition, McIntosh wasn't sure whether he should even be wrestling. But as he later said in the hallway of the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, "She wanted me to wrestle and wrestle hard. She would- n't have it any other way." ■ Megaludis planning to return next season It looks as though 125-pounder Nico Megaludis will be back in a Penn State singlet next season. There had been speculation that Megaludis, who red- shirted this past season, was thinking about taking an Olympic redshirt next year, which would have delayed his senior season until 2016-17. But on March 22, he tweeted the following: "I learned a lot this year! And so grateful for my team and how they performed! But man it feels good to be Redshirt Free today! #March 19-2016." March 19 is the date of next year's NCAA finals.

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