Surgery sidelines UI’s Perry
By Andy Hamilton
Iowa City Press-Citizen
The top-ranked Iowa wrestling team will be without one of its top-ranked wrestlers for a few weeks.
Mark Perry Jr., the defending NCAA champion and No. 1 wrestler at 165 pounds, underwent surgery Tuesday to clean up a meniscus issue in his knee.
“He’s mending, “Iowa coach Tom Brands said. “It’s fixed and the timeline is two-to-three weeks.”
That timeline would preclude Perry from wrestling Feb. 1 when the Hawkeyes have a showdown with defending NCAA champion Minnesota in Minneapolis. But the Iowa senior will have six weeks to recover in time for the Hawkeyes’ most important trip to Minneapolis.
The Big Ten Championships begin March 8 in Minneapolis. Perry won the tournament last year by defeating Michigan’s Eric Tannenbaum in the finals.
Perry, who is 13-2 with a team-high nine pins this season, regained the No. 1 ranking Jan. 13 by beating Tannenbaum during the semifinals of the National Duals in Cedar Falls.
Perry had trouble with his knee locking up last year and managed to win his first national title. But the recurring injury has caused him more problems this season. The knee locked up during his 4-1 victory against Tannenbaum at the National Duals, and he has sat out the past three duals.
“The injury’s been there for two years or a year and a half, “Brands said. “He’s dealt with it. The Michigan match, you can point to that when he was in that position. It bothered him that whole match and he ended up taking injury time. We finally got it figured out. It took us about five days to figure out really what was wrong. I feel like we’re on top of it. I feel good about it.”
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