{"id":282,"date":"2005-01-14T06:01:43","date_gmt":"2005-01-14T12:01:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/?p=282"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T05:00:00","slug":"young-buckeyes-face-tough-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/w282\/young-buckeyes-face-tough-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Buckeyes Face Tough Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the student paper at Ohio State<\/a><\/p>\n

OSU wrestling faces tough road<\/p>\n

By Christopher A. Buerkle The Lantern <\/p>\n

Columbus, OH (U-WIRE) — The seasoned veterans of the Ohio State wrestling team that finished third in the nation last season — the highest finish in program history — have been replaced with an array of young faces.<\/p>\n

Russ Hellickson, in his 19th season as head coach, only has the luxury of one returning starter from last year’s stellar squad.<\/p>\n

“This is the youngest team I have ever put on a mat, “Hellickson said. “When a team is young, even though they have a lot of talent they are going to make mistakes.”<\/p>\n

As a result of those mistakes, OSO dropped three of its first four duels.<\/p>\n

But after going 4-0 at St. John Arena on Saturday, OSU (5-3) seems to be back on track. OSU dismantled Cleveland State and Drexel, 33-7 and 21-10, respectively, and edged out Kent State and Bloomsburg, 23-16 and 18-17, respectively.<\/p>\n

Sophomore J.D. Bergman (197 pounds), the only returning All-American from last season, and redshirt freshman T.J. Enright (133 pounds), both went undefeated in the tournament. <\/p>\n

Hellickson said he was pleased with his team’s performance.<\/p>\n

“We are wrestling with more intensity now then we were a month ago, “Hellickson said. “If we would have wrestled on Saturday like we did a month ago, we could have easily lost a couple of the duels.”<\/p>\n

OSU has had the unenviable task of filling the void left by four-time All-American and two-time national champion Tommy Rowlands. Even though he will not be wrestling for OSU this season, the scarlet and gray have not lost him completely: Rowlands is serving as an assistant coach.<\/p>\n

“You’d like to have him on the mat, but Rowlands is a pretty intense leader as a coach, “Hellickson said.<\/p>\n

Enright agrees that having Rowlands around another year has had a positive impact on the team.<\/p>\n

“Tommy will do anything to help us, “Enright said.<\/p>\n

Though OSU may be young, Bergman feels his team is ready to take on the challenges awaiting them.<\/p>\n

“In Division I wrestling you’re wrestling good guys every match, “Bergman said. “Sometimes young guys start to wonder how good they really are, but our guys are all handling it pretty well.”<\/p>\n

Among those guys “handling it well “is true freshman heavyweight Kirk Nails. The Hilliard native went 3-1 on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“(Nails) is really stepping it up, “Bergman said of his teammate.<\/p>\n

This weekend has OSU traveling to Pittsburgh tomorrow and Cornell on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Brian Baldridge (165 pounds), will not be among the OSU wrestlers taking to the mat this weekend. Baldridge suffered a dislocated elbow while practicing Monday and is expected to be out 6-8 weeks.<\/p>\n

Though Hellickson says no one match carries more importance than another, a win over Pittsburgh’s Drew Headlee would be extra sweet for Enright. Enright lost a major decision to Headlee earlier this season.<\/p>\n

“I look forward to trying to avenge the loss, “Enright said.<\/p>\n

OSU’s schedule will get tougher as it approaches the Big Ten season. Almost every one of OSU’s remaining opponents is nationally ranked.<\/p>\n

“On paper these teams coming up are better than us, “Bergman said. “We are going to have to come out wrestling hard.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the student paper at Ohio State OSU wrestling faces tough road By Christopher A. Buerkle The Lantern Columbus, OH (U-WIRE) — The seasoned veterans of the Ohio State wrestling team that finished third in the nation last season — the highest finish in program history — have been replaced with an array of young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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-282","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-4y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}