After losing a pair of Big Ten dual meets last week, the Illinois wrestling team is looking to get back on track this weekend as its set to face No. 2 Iowa on Friday and No. 17 Northwestern on Sunday.
Wrestling against ranked opponents has become routine for the Illini. Head coach Jim Heffernan described their schedule as “easily the most difficult schedule in the country.”
“We’re wrestling the equivalent of Alabama, Oregon, Florida and Ohio State in football in a four week stretch,” Heffernan said. “It’s not like we’re losing to bad teams, I think we’ve competing pretty well for the most part.”
After defeating the Illini 20-13 last season in Iowa City, Iowa, the Hawkeyes increased their all-time series lead to 47-27-1 against Illinois. The Hawkeyes are 16-1 this season, with their only loss coming to No. 3 Oklahoma State.
At 125 pounds, the Illini’s No. 3 Jesse Delgado will take on the defending 125-pound NCAA champion, No. 1 Matt McDonough. The two wrestlers met twice last year, when Delgado claimed the first match 11-7, but was defeated 4-3 in the Big Ten Championships. McDonough’s loss to Delgado last year was his only loss of the season.
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No. 10 Daryl Thomas of Illinois will face No. 2 Tony Ramos in the 133-pound match.
“It’s gonna be a good match,” Thomas said. “I just need to come out and enforce my style, keep his hands off me and I think it will be a good night for me.”
The Illini have dropped four of their last five Big Ten dual matches. The Big Ten Championships are slowly approaching, as they will occur mid-March. Thomas stressed the importance of gaining momentum before the Big Ten Tournament as well as the NCAA Championships.
“It’s more important to wrestle well than focusing on wins,” he said. “If we wrestle well, we should win.”
Junior 197-pound Mario Gonzalez said it’s important to wrestle for all seven minutes of every match. If Illinois can do that, it will have a good chance to pull off the upset against a solid Iowa team.
“If we wrestle to our ability, we can beat Iowa,” Gonzalez said. “I would say technically, we’re way better than them. They’re not really a technical team, they just wrestle hard and as long as we wrestle hard and stay with our technique, a lot of our guys should come out on top.”
Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @yaboybernie11.
