HERO: Payam Zarrinpour, Sacred Heart<\/p>\n
Heavyweight Payam Zarrinpour became the first All-America in any sport at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., when he beat Iowa State’s David Zabriskie, 9-6, in the consolation bracket. Zarrinpour will finish no worse than eighth.<\/p>\n
GOAT: Darrion Caldwell, North Carolina State<\/p>\n
In the 141 quarterfinals, he blew his chance to pin top-seeded Ryan Lang of Northwestern — twice — then got pinned himself in the first period. Live by the pin, die by the pin.<\/p>\n
HIGHLIGHTS
\nCONTACT SPORT: Penn’s Matt Valenti, the defending champ at 133, had to stop his quarterfinal match twice to reinsert one of his contact lenses. Valenti eventually saw his way to a 4-0 win over Minnesota’s Mack Reiter.<\/p>\n
LOUDEST CHEER: The Palace crowd erupted over the insanely intense quarterfinal action between Caldwell and Lang. They came out trading blows like it was the Hagler-Hearns fight. Like that bout, Caldwell-Lang ended too quickly.<\/p>\n
LOUDEST BOO: The Palace crowd let the referees have it in the 125-pound semifinals when they called a one-point stalling penalty on Cornell’s Troy Nickerson that led to a 2-1 quadruple-overtime victory for Nebraska’s Paul Donahoe, a Davison native.<\/p>\n
QUOTABLE<\/p>\n
“That was the goal. I missed that first one, that pigtail. It’s like the NCAA basketball tournament, that’s a play-in match, it doesn’t even count for the tournament. So if I pin these next guys, I pin through the tournament in my mind.”<\/p>\n
Missouri’s Ben Askren, the defending 174-pound champ, on his attempt to pin every opponent this week. He has three pins after winning his first match by technical fall.<\/p>\n
TWO CENTS<\/p>\n
It’s for all the marbles tonight as a lifetime of devotion comes down to seven minutes for 20 wrestlers. The only time you’ll be likely to see more crying at a sporting event is after a Lions game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HERO: Payam Zarrinpour, Sacred Heart Heavyweight Payam Zarrinpour became the first All-America in any sport at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., when he beat Iowa State’s David Zabriskie, 9-6, in the consolation bracket. Zarrinpour will finish no worse than eighth. GOAT: Darrion Caldwell, North Carolina State In the 141 quarterfinals, he blew his chance […]<\/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_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2517","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-EB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517","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=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}