Hokies' Wrestlers Christen Moss Arts Center with 18-16 Win Over Virginia

The Moss Arts Center provided quite the dramatic, if unusual, backdrop for the Hokies' wrestling match against Virginia on Sunday, and Tech's squad responded with a performance that was positively theatrical.

With the Cavaliers holding a slim 12-11 lead heading into the final three contests of the dual meet, the Hokies responded with a pair of clutch performances to earn the team's second straight win over the rival Hoos and an 18-16 victory in the team's opening match in the unconventional venue.

"I think wrestling on a stage is the epitome of our art," said redshirt sophomore Sal Mastriani. "To perform in front of a crowd, there's no better experience and for the sport of wrestling, it's an awesome job by Virginia Tech to promote the sport."

Hokies' head coach Kevin Dresser responded with the type of skepticism reserved for the demanding coach of a team that just beat the 12th ranked squad in the country, but it's clear the performance made an impact on him too.

"I get it that it was probably a tough environment to wrestle in for our guys, they've been hearing about it and reading about it, seeing tweets, Facebook pictures, countdowns," Dresser said. "We probably got a little more tired in certain situations than we probably normally do, but that comes with nerves and the building a little bit. But I'll take it any time we can beat the 12th ranked team in the nation and I've got to be happy with it, maybe not 100 percent happy."

Dresser extended a personal invitation to all manner of VT celebrities for the match, and they turned out in force to witness Tech's big win. Tech President Tim Sands, Athletic Director Whit Babcock and even Bud Foster stopped by to see what all the fuss was about.

"They told me they were all coming, so I said 'I'm going to be looking for you' and I made sure I went up and saw all three of them before the match," Dresser said. "Bud and I are good friends, I see him all the time, but seeing Whit Babcock and President Sands here is a cool thing."

The Tech luminaries were treated to raucous crowd of over 1,000 fans, but Dresser says he's still looking for more energy in such a small space.

"I wish we had gotten a little louder," Dresser said. "When you get a chance to wrestle in a venue like this, you've got to raise the roof and we didn't raise the roof enough today."

Even still, the intimacy of the environment clearly made an impact on the rest of the squad.

"This was the coolest experience of my life," said redshirt sophomore Ty Walz. "I've wrestled in some pretty cool environments in high school, but nothing compares to this. I've wrestled in the NCAAs, but it wasn't as intimate or as cool an environment as what we wrestled in today."

The squad normally holds its meets in the considerably more spacious Cassell Coliseum, but Walz thinks the team's spot on the big stage dwarfed even that venue.

"How the crowd's set up and everything, it makes it different, it makes you feel like you're the center of the attention," Walz said. "Of course, back in Cassell you're at the center of the arena and everything, but here, you're on the stage right in front of the crowd and it's awesome."

Tech's athletic staff certainly contributed to the unusual atmosphere by pulling out all the stops for the meet.

"We compared it to like an MMA event, coming out of the tunnel (on the stage), you had smoke blowing, the dancers dancing on the stage, the halftime breaks, the music playing, the crowd cheering for you," Mastriani said. "It was a really special event and I was glad to be part of it."

The wrestling itself was certainly worth watching too.

The Hoos grabbed a 6-4 lead after the first three matches, getting tight decisions from seventh ranked Blaise Butler at 174 pounds and Zach Nye at 197.

Tech's Austin Gabel kept the Hokies afloat early with an 11-2 major decision at 184 pounds, but Dresser says he didn't like what he saw from the slow start.

"I feel like there were some places we didn't charge and this is a charging sport," Dresser said.

From there, the Hokies found their footing.

Walz, the ninth ranked heavyweight in the country, faced off against UVA's Patrick Gillen in a rematch of the pair's match in the "Virginia Duals" meet in early January. It was a tightly contested match, but Walz ultimately emerged with a 3-2 decision, besting Gillen by the exact same score as he did back on January 10.

Then, Tech's fourth ranked Joey Dance dominated Will Mason for a 13-4 major decision at 125 pounds to go up 11-6 for the meet.

But the Cavs regained plenty of ground in the next two matches.

UVA's 13th ranked George DiCamillio bested 19th ranked Kevin Norstrem for a 4-0 decision at 133 pounds, another Virginia Duals rematch that ended in the same result.

At 141 pounds, it was a battle of the backups on both sides. Tech's Devin Carter, the third ranked wrestler in the class, suffered a knee injury in the team's last match and re-aggravated it during practice afterward.

"Devin got hurt at Iowa State, then we stayed off the mat, and we got back on the mat Monday and his knee locked up so they had to go in and do a scope," Dresser said. "Tuesday morning we had him over at Montgomery Regional, seeing all the nurses and doctors there, and they did their job, so I'm not worried about Devin Carter, he'll be back."

That left sophomore Jerry Rennau to wrestle in his place against Justin Van Hoose, UVA's own backup in the class. He was filling in for Joe Spisak, who suffered an ankle injury in early January, yet he acquitted himself well.

Van Hoose earned an 8-4 decision to give Virginia a 12-11 lead with just three matches to go.

"Their guy on paper wasn't very good, and our guy on paper's not very good," Dresser said. "Two guys in the D-I college wrestling world that aren't very good yet relative to the competition, so I didn't know how that match was going to turn out."

The Hokies needed Mastriani to deliver plenty of points in his bout at 149 pounds to make up some ground, and he delivered, dominating Chris Yankowich with a 19-6 major decision to give Tech a 15-12 lead.

"I knew I wasn't wrestling their main starter, and even their backup got hurt, so I knew I had to get bonus points," Mastriani said. "They didn't put pressure on me, they just said go out, wrestle your style, score points and keep going, keep the pace up. Don't go for big moves early in the match, once he gets tired you can start racking up the points and that's what my plan was. At the beginning, it was 4-1, but by the middle of the second period, then things started to open up, that's what I was planning on."

Now Tech was counting on Nick Brascetta to pad the lead at 157 pounds. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be much of a tall order for the fifth ranked wrestler in the class, but this was Brascetta's first action since November 9 after suffering an elbow injury.

"I knew Brascetta coming back was going to have a lot of nerves and you just can't simulate that experience out there," Dresser said. "He's been training his butt off and slowly progressing his weight back down, but you just can't simulate that once you get out there."

Brascetta shook the rust off with ease, however, dispatching Andrew Atkinson with an 8-3 decision to extend Tech's lead to 18-12 for the match.

"It was exciting, but a bit overwhelming," Brascetta said. "I got more tired than I think I wanted to be."

Dresser agrees with that assessment, even if he was happy with the result.

"He kind of hit the wall at about the fifth minute," Dresser said. "I think if that would've been the normal Nick Brascetta, I think we would've got the major there and that would made us breath a little easier on the bench."

Heading into the final match of the meet, the Hokies knew they'd emerge victorious if 165-pound Chad Strubbe simply avoided getting pinned.

However, his opponent would be Nick Sulzer, the second ranked wrestler in the category, which certainly put the Hokies on edge a bit on the sidelines.

"I understand being in the situation, you don't want to tell a guy 'don't get pinned,'" Mastriani said. "But when you're in a situation like that, you've got to wrestle smart. If you've got an opportunity to score, I think you should take it, but at the same time, you've got to be a team player and wrestle for the team at the point. His style's a little funky, he puts himself at risk, so everyone was on the edge of their seat."

Yet despite his reputation as a gambler, Strubbe wrestled a relatively conservative match, allowing Sulzer to earn a 12-3 major decision, but refusing to go down for good.

That sealed the deal on the Hokies' 18-16 win, even if the final match gave Dresser's heart a workout in the process.

"Strubbe is kind of a risk taker, so that's kind of the guy that as a coach, my heart's kind of going pitter patter," Dresser said. "He rolls around like a maniac, but he probably had to tone it down a little too because he didn't want the dual meet to come to him trying something. But Strubbe throws it all out there. I think if he throws all out there and the dual meet isn't on the line, then that's a much closer match."

The team won't have much time to savor the victory. The next opponent the Hokies will face is Pittsburgh, the 13th ranked team in the country and last year's regular season ACC winners.

"We go from the 12th ranked team to the 13th ranked team, so I'm not going to sleep much between Friday and now, I'll tell you that much, because I want to win that one too," Dresser said.

Dresser said it's unlikely that Carter will be back in time for the meet, with Sunday's match against NC State looking doubtful as well, so the Hokies will have to keep adapting to his absence.

"We have to figure out how to win without Devin," Dresser said. "We might have to do that Friday and Sunday too next week without Devin, so we need these guys to go out and do what Devin does. Devin normally goes out and gets bonus points."

But the rest of the squad notes that Brascetta's return should help soften the blow if Carter has to be out for any extended period of time.

"It did hurt a lot having Devin get hurt, but Nick coming back kind of equalized it out," Walz said.

The Panthers definitely present another challenge for the Hokies, particularly in sixth ranked 174-pounder Tyler Wilps, but the squad is hoping the Moss Arts Center feels a little more like home the second time around.

"It'll probably be easier the next time we're in here because we've been in here, we're getting accustomed to the environment and we'll be able to visualize ourselves wrestling more," Walz said. "(Saturday) was the first time we were in here, so we really didn't have time to prepare, visualize it, so now that we know what it looks like and and feels like we can start thinking about how it's going to be."

But Dresser warns that he won't be a happy camper if the team's intensity looks anything like it did in the early going against Virginia.

"They better not be that damn tentative next time, I'll tell you that," Dresser said. "The butterflies are over, alright, it's time to roll."