By Courtney Baumann
In a dual meet many expected to be close, the Iowa wrestling team came away with a 27-9 win over No. 6 Nebraska on Sunday in Carver-Hawkeye.The Huskers, who “came for blood,” Iowa wrestling head coach Tom Brands said, could not contain the No. 3 Hawkeyes.
Iowa won seven of the first eight matchups, including victories from four of the five wrestlers who were honored for Senior Day.
Thomas Gilman and Topher Carton both won their bouts against top-10 wrestlers, while Alex Meyer and Sammy Brooks won theirs by technical fall and pin. Cory Clark lost to No. 5 Eric Montoya in a down-to-the-wire match in which Montoya was awarded 4 near-fall points with under a minute left.
“Clark did a lot of good things to get himself in position to win that match. I don’t panic when Clark goes down by a takedown,” Brands said. “But sometimes … where you’re throwing that side headlock, we’ve got to be a lot smarter there, and we gave the guy 6 points … It happened at Michigan, it happened at Oklahoma State, and it happened against Nebraska.”
Iowa led in the team score, 3-2, after Gilman’s and Clark’s matches.
Although the Huskers lost a team point for unsportsmanlike conduct at the conclusion of the 133-pound bout, it looked as though the score would remain close for the rest of the meet.
However, Iowa began to widen the gap during the 141 match, when Carton won by decision over Colton McCrystal. The two were tied 3-3 heading into the third period. Carton chose down to start and escaped quickly to go up 4-3.
A successful challenge from Brands on an uncalled takedown resulted in 2 more points in Carton’s favor. The senior ended his career in Carver with a 6-4 upset over the No. 10 wrestler.
“Going into this match, getting ready, even just walking over from my apartment across the street, I was just trying to take everything in,” Carton said. “It was going to be my last time, my last walk down this tunnel with this group of guys, I wasn’t going to lose. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: These are the greatest fans in the world, and I wanted to go out on a positive note and give them something to cheer about for my last time in Carver.”
Although neither wrestled whom they expected to — both Micah Barnes and T.J. Dudley did not compete — Meyer and Brooks also left their home arena on a high note. No. 11 ranked Meyer won by technical fall, 17-1, over Eric Engler in 5:21. Brooks immediately followed up the impressive showing with a fall of his own.
While the seniors put on a show for their last matches in Carver-Hawkeye, the marquee match of the day came right before the intermission when No. 2 Michael Kemerer squared off against No. 3 Tyler Berger. While the two have only wrestled each other once, that one match was enough to keep fans excited about the second time.
Kemerer earned his first victory over Berger late December in the championship round of the Midlands. The two went into two sudden-victory and tiebreaker rounds before the redshirt freshman earned the 6-5 decision over Berger.
The second time around was a bit shorter than the first, but Kemerer once again came away the winner, this time with a 3-2 decision.
“I want to score more than one takedown, so still have got to focus on finishing those shots clean,” Kemerer said. “I like to score points, and 3 points, I’d like to score more than that. But it’s good to get the win, and if it only takes seven minutes, it only takes seven minutes.”
