ILLINI Roster & Scholarship Grid (125-157)
As usual, please let me know what I need to add or remove. Are the weights correct for each athlete? Probably not. It is impossible to judge the growth spurts of folks like Kannon Webster and Will Baysingar.
The red highlighted names are the red-shirt year for that student-athlete. Any wrestler in the transfer portal will not be listed here, but I hope he decides to come back.
I expect there will be wrestle-offs at most of these weights. The one that should be the most scintillating is at 125 between Justin Cardani and Maximo Renteria. I am going to ask them to wear body cams and post that video.
The team sports an amount of depth at each weight class that I haven't seen in quite some time. With the financial incentives for academics that will be provided to ILLINI wrestlers in the future, that will be another drawing point. Stay on the team, work toward your degree, and you will get $$$$.
Lucas Byrd is on schedule to become the first ILLINI wrestler to earn five All-American honors. A national title for Byrd would be the first for ILLINOIS since IMAR in 2016.
CORRECTIONS: Jake Harrier has four years of eligibility remaining. Also, in my greatest ever facepalm, I left off the dude himself, Hudson Goebel. This guy:
In any decent authoritarian regime, I would be shot for this, and my widow would receive 50 Ҏҹҙӑӵ, which would be enough to afford her a turnip sandwich, one cigarette and a beer. Thank God for the USA! These changes have been made to the image at the top of this post. An earlier iteration omitted this information. My apologies.
Mark Stewart on Twitter wrote this: "I think Kevon will only be at 49 for 1 year. Joe Roberts will redshirt this year.. end up a 49 next year. Kannon starts career at 141. Not sure Hayes is really a 133. JMO, Odom wrestles 157 this year...."
ReplyDeleteThis is the kind of discussion I like to hear! Cheers, Mark!
I agree Kannon starts off at 41 an Sammie more likely 25
ReplyDeleteGreat to read you, Huff! Next time you see Kannon wrestle, check out his forearms and paws. It would not surprise me if he was at 165 sometime during college. 141 is a guess for a start, but he keeps growing!
DeleteYou're like the third person who suggested 125 for Sammie. That's probably right, but I can see him growing like his brother and fighting for 133 down the road.
I'm already geeked out on next year's team.