Webster, Baysingar, Marinopoulos and Attasauov

ACADEMICS

The ILLINI are recording pinfalls on the mat and in the classroom! At the ILLINI Wrestling Blog & Forum & Beyond Plus, we always celebrate their achievements off the mat. A strong showing in your field of study can set you up for a better life. When you can manage a tough D1 sport like wrestling while maintaining a praiseworthy GPA, recruiters will notice. It shows a lot of character. 

Doors will open. 

There are four sets of criteria for earning NWCA Academic All-American status. KANNON WEBSTER and WILL BAYSINGAR met the requirements of "a 3.5 cumulative GPA and ... [winning] 60% of their total matches in at least 60% of the team's schedule." 

PETER MARINOPOULOS was not only instrumental in winning a couple of duals for the ILLINI, but he also had "a 3.5 cumulative GPA and [was] a participant at the conference qualifying tournament." 

These gentlemen join a long list of outstanding ILLINOIS wrestlers to earn this honor including Emery Parker, Mike Carr, Zac Brunson, Brock Ervin, Steven Rodrigues, Alex Tirapelle, Conrad Polz, B.J. Futrell, John Lockhart and the list goes on and on. 

Additionally, the ILLINI put basically a whole team on the Academic B1G list of honorees. "To be eligible for academic all-conference selection, student-athletes must be in at least their second academic year at their institution and carry a cumulative grade-point average of 3.0 or higher." 

So, the only reason the above list doesn't include all those juicy big-brained Freshmen is because they're not eligible! It should be noted that basketball had three players on their list. LOL! 

TRANSFER RAMAZAN ATTASAUOV

We seriously thought this was an April Fools Day prank. 

It's not! 

All the ILLINI wrestlers reposted this on social media, and you can see (above) that Coach Poeta posted it himself. No better authority! Looks like the Orange and Blue have a transfer, and according to Ramazan's initial post, it looks like he will be wrestling at 125. His post concluded with two hashtags: #ILLINI and #125. 

He's been at Iowa State for four years and wrestled at 133 for a total of 61 matches, zero at 125. Was he "taking one for the team" by wrestling up a weight? Can he successfully manage the weight? We don't know. 

He will have the opportunity to listen to advice from an expert in weight management by the name of Zane Richards. Moreover, he'll be able to keep weight off with a lot of different training partners who've known the struggle, including Jesse Delgado, the very same Zane Richards, Lucas Byrd and others.  

Even having been at ISU for four years, it appears that he's got two years of eligibility remaining. We assume he gets a Covid year credit, and a redshirt year credit. He started for the Cyclones one year and qualified for the NCAAs at 133. 

He's beaten some quality wrestlers so far in his journey, including Tony Madrigal (x2), the #1 NAIA wrestler, NCAA qualifiers Jake Gliva, Ethan Oakley, Angelo Rini, Julian Farber, Connor Brown, Sidney Flores (x2), Derrick Cardinal, Sean Carter and Dustin Norris, as well as Cullan Schriever, Cory Land and lost by two to Vito Arujau and Austin DeSanto. 

Byrd is the Wyrd got the win against him by pinfall. Welcome to the ILLINI! If Ramazan can get to 125 and remain effective, this team took a step closer to a podium finish.