By Andy Hamilton
\nIowa City Press-Citizen<\/p>\n
The Iowa wrestling class was nearly complete last spring when the Hawkeyes made a late addition, signing a 133-pound prospect who’d never won a state title, but impressed Jim Zalesky with his rapid improvement.<\/p>\n
That 133-pound prospect became Iowa’s 133-pounder Wednesday.<\/p>\n
True freshman Daniel Dennis earned a starting spot in the Hawkeye lineup by beating senior Gabe Ruhkala by a 16-0 technical fall in a wrestle-off.<\/p>\n
Junior Luke Magnani won a 7-4 decision against senior Trent Goodale to earn the starting position at 125 pounds for Iowa, which opens its dual season Saturday at Arizona State.<\/p>\n
Dennis — a two-time Illinois state runner-up at Grant High School in Ingleside — was expected to bolster Iowa’s depth when he signed with the Hawkeyes. But when incumbent Mario Galanakis did not enroll in classes this fall, Iowa started searching for a 133-pound starter.<\/p>\n
In Dennis, the Hawkeyes found an aggressive freshman. He won the 133-pound title at the Spartan Classic in Dubuque and then went 4-2 in the 20-and-under division last weekend at the Kaufman-Brand Open before beating Ruhkala, whose wrestle-offs last year against Galanakis were never one-sided.<\/p>\n
“(Dennis has) shown us some good things, “Iowa coach Jim Zalesky said. “He’s our best guy for right now, and he wants to wrestle.”<\/p>\n
Dennis might be a work in progress, but Zalesky said he likes the freshman’s potential and thinks Dennis can hone a lot of his rough edges by March.<\/p>\n
“He’s got a lot of positions he’s got to work on, “Zalesky said. “But we like the way he wrestles.”<\/p>\n
Dennis’ style has rubbed off on his older teammates.<\/p>\n
“I look at him and I think he has good skills, but the attitude he brings, I like watching him wrestle because he gets after it the whole time, “senior 165-pounder Cole Pape said. “That can kind of pump you up. If you’re not really wrestling that way and you look at a freshman coming in and wrestling like that, it gets you going.<\/p>\n
“He listens to everything the coaches say. He works hard, and he’s working on what the coaches want him to work on.”<\/p>\n
Zalesky said Tuesday that the Hawkeyes will likely make a decision later in the week whether to use sophomore Mark Perry Jr. or hold the 174-pounder out Saturday. The returning NCAA finalist sustained a knee injury last month that forced him to sit out the first two weekends of competition.<\/p>\n
If Perry can’t wrestle, the Hawkeyes will use junior Ben Stedman, who won a 12-6 decision Wednesday in a wrestle-off against Jacob Neuzil.<\/p>\n
Zalesky said Iowa has not yet made a decision whether it will use junior Ryan Fuller or sophomore Matt Fields at heavyweight on Saturday against Arizona State’s fourth-ranked Cain Velasquez.<\/p>\n
Reach Andy Hamilton at 339-7368 or ahamilton @ press-citizen.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Andy Hamilton Iowa City Press-Citizen The Iowa wrestling class was nearly complete last spring when the Hawkeyes made a late addition, signing a 133-pound prospect who’d never won a state title, but impressed Jim Zalesky with his rapid improvement. That 133-pound prospect became Iowa’s 133-pounder Wednesday. True freshman Daniel Dennis earned a starting spot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-td","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}