It's Lucas Byrd Day!

 

Welcome to Lucas Byrd Day at The ILLINI Wrestling Blog and Forum and Beyond, where Byrd is always the Wyrd! We have a three-part post today to celebrate Lucas Byrd’s bid to the 2023 NCAA Division One wrestling tournament. 

The first part is not a replay of what we wrote in the original NCAA Preview thread about his first-round matchup. Forget that. On the contrary, a lot has changed.  

Lucas now has a first-round match with Iowa's Brody Teske. So, you'll want to burn part one into your memory hole. Part two looks at what happens in Byrd’s second match and so on. Part three is where the party begins: Lucas Byrd’s new 2023 NCAA Hype Video.

 

Friends, let’s get started with Lucas’ new bracket:

 

LUCAS BYRD (AKA BYRD IS THE WYRD)

PART ONE

Lucas had been set to meet Flyboy Cody Phippen (19-6) of Air Force in the first round, but #11 seed Connor McGonagle of Lehigh (and before that, Hogwarts) had to drop out because of injury. That meant everybody with a #12 seed or higher moved up the bracket one seed and the alternate was placed into the "wrestle-in" slot. 

That means that Lucas Byrd's new opponent will be Brody Teske (9-4) of Iowa, who moves up from the #24 seed to the #23. Bad luck for the Hawkeye and Hawkeye fans, as Micky Phillipi had been his opponent, and the Pitt wrestler has never made it past the Round of 12. 

So, instead, Teske will face two-time All American Lucas Byrd. 

As you might recall, Teske started off his career at Penn State, spent two years there until a walk-on earned the spot ahead of him, and he flew off to the University of Northern Iowa. He wrestled for the Panthers two seasons, earning a Round of 12 and a Round of 16 down at 125. 

He transferred to Iowa for this season and earned a bid with a 9-4 record. 

All of his losses on the season have been to former AAs, including RBY, Daton Fix and Chris Cannon. That loss to the Wildcat stands out because it happened most recently and was by a wide 4-9 margin. His losses to RBY and Fix have included bonus points. 

As a fellow who wrestled at 125 last season, Teske can be pushed around by the bigger and stronger wrestlers. He's not too dangerous at 133 compared to 125, as his bonus percentage has dropped from a high of 41% down to 15% this year (two of nine wins). 

Against common opponents, Byrd is 21-0, while the Hawkeye comes in at 9-1. Wrestlestat.com is predicting a 10-3 win for the ILLINI. Teske's best wins are over Rayvon Foley of MSU and Joe Heilmann of Rutgers. I would suggest that he's a slightly better wrestler than the Burwicks and Glivas of the world, but he's not as strong as those guys. A close analog would be a slightly better Taylor Lamont. In fact, they both earned AA honors outside the B1G at the lower weight and seem pretty small for 133.                 

 PART TWO

Once he beats that **** Hawkeye, the ILLINI will likely have Michael Colaiocco of Penn in the next round. (It always amazes me that the NCAA and the NWCA and Wrestlestat.com can get “Colaiocco” right, but they have problems with “Zac.”). Colaiocco will have to get past Connor Brown of Missouri (11-9) in his first-round match. 

The Quaker is 23-5 on the year, and you might remember, he had a win over Lucas in the Midlands tournament by the score of 15-13. Byrd gave up a quick cradle and was down a touchdown and a safety and fought like crazy to win at the buzzer—except the ref didn’t allow those last few points.

Beat Colaiocco, and the two-time All American would have a matchup with Oklahoma State’s Daton Fix. You know everybody wants this match. Fix is 26-0 on the season, and, of course, would like to be a four-time runner-up, if Byrd doesn’t get in the way.

The question on my mind, of course, is whether Fix is helping himself to the banned substances in the garage refrigerator. As I’ve said previously, I expect that after Spencer and Yianni win their fourth titles, the next NCAA D1 Wrestling four-timer will be IMAR, if you catch my drift.

 

 

A loss in the first round to the **** Hawkeye Teske would mean another long wrestleback route that would start with Connor Brown (11-9) of Missouri Kurtis, then the loser of a second-round match between Micky Phillipi of Pitt (13-3) and Aaron Nagao of Minnesota (18-4) (unless Wyatt Henson or Kurtis Phipps, respectively, have first round upsets). That’s a pretty tough second wrestleback match, so Lucas will need to stay on the championship side of the bracket.

A loss in the second round to Penn’s Colaiocco, and the kid in the Orange and Blue would likely face either the #29 seed Angelo Rini (12-15) of Columbia or the #30 Ethan Rotondo (12-12) of Cal Poly.

 

 

PART THREE

Here’s the party! All the cool kids are here hanging out and waiting for the World Premiere of the Lucas Byrd 2023 NCAA Hype Video. And here it is, enjoy:

LET'S GO ILLINI!!!