Fanta and Smith win their matches
Northern Illinois University opened up their 2011-12 wrestling season over the weekend with a victory at home.
The Huskies took down North Central in the first match by a 30-15 margin, but went on to struggle and lose in a subsequent meeting against Stanford. Huskies head coach Ryan Ludwig said of the event, "It was a dual meet that I thought we let slip away. We had great momentum, and we were only a couple of shots away from winning the whole dual. Our technique needs to improve in those areas and once we get that down, we'll start locking those matches down."
Ludwig also commented on the individual performances of Nick Smith and Kevin Fanta; "Nick Smith really had an impressive day today. I thought his conditioning was fantastic. He stayed on the attack and put up a lot of points. Kevin did a great job for us. He's more of a banger and a grinder, and I thought he did a great job."
Both Fanta and Smith won their matches against both North Central and Stanford, but could not make up for the rest of their Huskie teammates. Fanta was able to outlast Andrew Zoback, North Central's only 40-match winner from 2010-11, and then Alex Manly of Stanford in a physically draining competition. Smith, on the other hand, posted the greatest win margin of the day with his 20-9 Cardinal conquer as well as his 13-4 North Central takedown.
Meanwhile, Matt Mougin of Northern Illinois had one of the most impressive victories of the day coming against Stanford after dealing with some pre-match jitters. Mougin stated, "[my strategy] against Stanford was to just go out and wrestle. My first match I got too nervous. It was really terrible; I'm out of shape. But I just went out there and wrestled my match and had some fun." Mougin held off Stanford's Garrett Schaner in a 2-1 match, but faced a upsetting defeat against North Central in spite of his club beating that school.
Jason Borrelli, head coach of the Stanford club said, "NIU wrestled very well. They are well conditioned, well coached; they wrestled through hard positions and out-hustled us at a lot of positions. So hats off to coach Ludwig and these guys for being ready to go."
Northern Illinois's next match will be over the weekend of November 12th at Michigan State.
