Can we just play Ohio State in everything, every week? Seems like we'd win a few national championships that way. The wrestling team continued the 2014 tradition of beating the Buckeyes by knocking off the 4th-ranked team in the country this afternoon in front of an estimated crowd of 2,700 in Cassell Colosseum. I only got to watch about half of the matches (church and a visit to grandma's definitely hampered my WatchESPN game), but Hokie wrestlers went toe to toe with some very solid competition, defeating a squad in which eight out of the ten wrestlers were ranked in the nation's top 25.
The match of the day was betwen #11 Zach Epperly of Tech and #13 Mark Martin of OSU, with OSU clinging to a 12-9 lead. After three periods of action, the score was tied 1-1. Five overtime periods later, Epperly went down, needing an escape to keep the match going. Instead, Zach got his hips out, grabbed ahold of Martin's head, and was able to secure a gigantic pin at the ridiculous time of 10:50.
The dual continued back-and-forth, with OSU regaining the lead heading into the heavyweight bout, 18-15. For the second consecutive dual, #9 Ty Walz faced off against a top-12 opponent, needing a win by at least 2 points against #11 Nick Tavanello to give Tech the victory. After an intense 7 minutes, the score was tied 3-3. During the tiebreaker period (a pair of 30-second "rideouts" following a 1-minute standing-start period), Walz scored a massive takedown after surrendering an escape and then notched an escape of his own to win, 6-4. The dual finished with VT and OSU tied 18-18, with each team having one pin (the second tiebreaker criteria). Tech edged OSU on the third criteria - total match points scored, 48 to 47 - to give them the victory over the Buckeyes by the narrowest of margins, 19-18.
The Hokies will hope to continue their run of success on Black Friday when they head to Vegas to compete at the Cliff Keen Invitational.
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