Big Ten Championships
It wasn't exactly the way the Iowa wrestling team wanted to win the Big Ten title. But it was better than no title at all.
Iowa's performance in the consolation rounds lifted the top-ranked Hawkeyes past Minnesota and gave them their first Big Ten championship in four years.
Iowa won 11 of 13 consolation matches to overtake the Minnesota Gophers on the final day of the tournament. The Hawkeyes were proud of those results, but they wanted more wrestlers standing on top of the awards podium than just sophomore 149-pounder Brent Metcalf.
"We probably didn't have the kind of success we wanted to this weekend, but what's nice about this is we have another chance to prove ourselves," Metcalf said. "We have one more chance to go and perform."
Joey Slaton (133), Jay Borschel (174), Phil Keddy (184) and Matt Fields (heavyweight) each won twice in the consolation bracket to finish third. Charlie Falck placed fourth at 125, Dan LeClere finished fifth at 141 and Ryan Morningstar won the seventh-place match at 157 to qualify for the NCAA Championships.
"This is a carbon copy of a Gable-coached team," said Iowa coach Tom Brands, who was named Big Ten Coach of the Year. "I don't say that to pat myself on the back, I say that because of the tradition going back, and Gable's influence is alive. The way these guys were able to come back, it's the story, and the way Metcalf won in the finals, that's the story."
Another part of the story was Iowa's success in head-to-head matches against Minnesota. The Hawkeyes won all three bouts. Metcalf beat Dustin Schlatter in the finals at 149, Fields beat Ben Berhow in the consolation semifinals and Slaton beat Mack Reiter for third at 133.
Slaton rode out Reiter in the second period, scored a reversal early in the third period and rode the Minnesota senior the rest of the way for a 3-0 win in a match that got heated in the final seconds.
"I just put him down hard, he turned around and kind of swung at me," Slaton said. "I was trying to get off of him and I was caught on him. It was nothing I did, I was just wrestling hard. He wanted to play a different game."
— Andy Hamilton