THE ILLINI WRESTLING BLOG AND FORUM

ILLINI COACHES The ILLINI are coached by Mike Poeta, Jeremy Hunter for the wee ones, and IMAR and AOC for the bigguns. Do we need to spell out their full names, biographies and favorite movies? No. This is the best staff in the country. That's all you need to know. Add in Director of Operations Bryan Medlin and Christian Kanzler, starring as Director of Player Operations.  We do wish athletic departments, and, yes, it is a problem with every single athletic department in this great country of ours, would not use the word "player" when referring to a "wrestler."  Brian Swaw was the "Voice of the ILLINI" last year, and we hope he's back. He kept the student announcers from using "player" instead of "wrestler," and for that we are grateful.   EARLY LOOK / TEAM RANKINGS This early look at the ILLINI Wrestling team is based on the lineup reported by Wrestlestat.com and the schedule provided by FightingILLINI.com. We do expect fire at

 

  This strip is a natural extension of the last Sunday Funnies, which went a little something like this:

  WHAT:    NWCA ALL-STAR CLASSIC WHO:    ZAC BRAUNAGEL vs. STEPHEN LITTLE WHEN:   Saturday, November 16 at 7:00 PM (Eastern) WHERE: Rec Hall, University Park, Campus of Penn State University TV/STREAMING:   FloWrestling TICKETS:    $25 to $40 BACKGROUND Zac Braunagel will take on Little Rock's Stephen Little at the prestigious NWCA All-Star Classic in a nice kick-off to the wrestling season. According to Wrestlestat.com and FloWrestling, the Trojan from UA Little Rock is ranked #5, while the Brawlnagel comes in at #9. Both are returning All Americans with Little winning 7th last season, while Zac got his AA during the Covid year. Of course, the ILLINI has been a Greco Senior World Team Member.  WHY WE HATE ARKANSAS LITTLE ROCK Okay, do we really care enough to do this? Guess we better. It's kind of customary now. Well, here's something, under the subheading of "Student Life" in its Wikipedia article you find this: " The student life at UA Little Rock is typi

 

There are a lot of exciting days when you report on ILLINI Wrestling, and one of those is seeing recruits visit the O&B. A group of absolute stud blue-chip monsters visited the campus over the weekend and got to see the unranked Fighting ILLINI football team become 3-0 and the new #24 team in the country.  That Altmyer kid is pretty good. His receivers may be even better.  But even that group might could not hold a candle to the Avengers Assembled by the ILLINI coaching staff for this glorious picture: Photographs from Jaxon Penovich's Instagram Feed I see a group that will win tons of All-American honors and wrestle for Championships. No shocker that the first actual commitment comes from Fargo Gold and State Champion Wyatt Medlin. And the guys had some time to fool around during the pictures: The first actual commitment ... Wyatt Medlin! We didn't have access to a single of Aaron Stewart but found the picture below on Twitter. It was from his first official home visit fro