Eleven (11) Days Until the Season Starts!

MSU OPEN

There are only eleven days until wrestling season begins for the ILLINI at the MSU Open. Another team has been added to that tournament: Cal Poly. I thought they probably didn't have a very good wrestling team, but I was wrong. Eight of their ten wrestlers are ranked in the Top 50 by wrestlestat.com. 

That includes Legend Lamar (#29 at 149), Bernie Truax (#12 at 184) and of course the stinky Badger, Evan Wick (#3 at 165). 

As a reminder, here are the other teams showing up at the MSU Open: Michigan, Oklahoma, Northwestern, Michigan State, Central Michigan, Northern Illinois, Edinboro, Ohio, Davenport, Wabash and Olivet. 


QUESTION

It looks like Trackwrestling (and I suppose Flo) will have any broadcast rights to the MSU Open. Has anybody heard anything differently? I see nothing on the MSU schedule about broadcasting, and there's nothing on the BTN or BTN+ schedule. This is going to be a monster tournament, and I don't want to miss it. 


FINALLY

It's weird to find profound lyrics in a crappy song, don't you think? This is from Semisonic's Closing Time:

Closing time, every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning's end, yeah

Pretty deep, no? I like that quite a lot, even if that "yeah" on the end almost ruins the sense of keen insight. But that brings me to a video of last season, which was the end of a previous beginning, before this new beginning:  





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ILLINI Wrestle-off Results, Seth Mendoza and Baby Wrestlers!

Image
THE REASON FOR THE WRESTLE-OFFS The ILLINI had their first wrestle-off in years yesterday at Huff Hall. The likely reasons for this are discussed in a preceding post here . The long and short of it is that the Brawlnagels are likely going to use the Olympic Redshirts that they earned over the Summer. Additionally, 2xAA Lucas Byrd is still injured.  In fact, Byrd is the Wyrd was at Super 32.  What a great ambassador for the ILLINI! He's instantly recognizable and relatable and fun and you can bet the kids love him. Since the image below was on IMAR's instagram account, can we assume that he led this expedition?  RESULTS OF THE WRESTLE-OFFS We don't have the full results for the wrestle-offs but were told that the ultimate winners included the following: Justin Cardani at 125; it was reported that Anthony Madrigal looked great, and that Kole Brower looked tough, but it was Madrigal who came out on top for the 133 spot.  Danny Pucino won; while Kannon Webster beat Jake Harrier
Read more

The ILLINI Midlands Preview

Image
That's right. The ILLINI Wrestling Blog & Forum & Beyond Plus will be a Corporate Sponsor of the 59th Annual Ken Kraft Midlands Tournament WHAT :  The 59th Annual Ken Kraft Midlands Tournament WHERE :  NOW Arena, Hoffman Estates, ILLINOIS WHEN :  Friday, December 29 at 9:30 am (Central) WHEN2 :  Saturday, December 30 at 11:00 am (Central) WHO :  48 Teams including ILLINOIS, 8 B1G Teams; Women's Tourney TV/STREAMING :  BTN+ (subscription streaming service) BOUT BOARD :  Trackwrestling TICKETS :  Ticketmaster ($102.00 for both sessions) TEAMS ENTERED There are 48 teams heading to the Midlands Tournament this year including these full squads (with their current Wrestlestat.com rankings): THE ILLINI, #13 Rutgers, #19 West Virginia, #22 Penn, #28 Arizona State, #30 Virginia, #33 Princeton, #36 Wisconsin, #39 Michigan State, #43 Cal Poly, #46 Ohio, #49 Cleveland State, #51 Harvard, #52 George Mason, #53 Northwestern, #63 Franklin & Marshall, #64 SIUE, and #65 Buffalo. A
Read more

Clues to the 2023-2024 Fighting ILLINI Lineup? And Wrestle-Offs!

Image
We found a clue to this season's Fighting ILLINI lineup at Trackwrestling. That organization keeps records on who on the various NCAA teams has certified at the various weights. Because this is the first cert of the year, most of the guys are above their likely weights that they will end up wrestling.  Most significantly, though, there were some omissions from the certification process. Will these omissions mean that the individuals won't wrestle during the season? Hmmmm. We will be interviewing Coach Poeta before the season starts so we'll have a better idea about what's going on.  In the meantime, who is missing from this Trackwrestling list : If you said Zac and Danny Braunagel, you win! Additionally, Lucas Byrd is not listed as "eligible," whatever that means. I had thought that the Braunagels would think about an Olympic redshirt, as they qualified through the USA Wrestling national tournament process.  As for Lucas Byrd, the last picture I saw of him sho
Read more