Central Michigan University
Virginia Tech
Chippewas Fall At Virginia Tech
11/19/2017 12:00:00 AM | Wrestling
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Ninth-ranked Virginia Tech won eight matches on Sunday in handing 17th-ranked Central Michigan a 26-6 loss in a nonconference wrestling dual at the Hokies' Cassell Coliseum.
The Chippewas (1-1) will return to the mat for the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational on Dec. 1-2. Virginia Tech is 3-0.
"It's a good time to wrestle this match because it pointed out a lot of things that we need to work on," CMU coach Tom Borrelli said. "We got ridden pretty hard tonight. The first thing (to work on) is getting off the bottom. I think we got beat in the third period or in overtime a lot.
"We've got to work on our conditioning. In this match we weren't aggressive enough. We didn't go after them like I thought we would."
CMU's victories came from Mason Smith (141) pounds and CJ Brucki (174).
Smith, a sophomore who is ranked 20th, posted a convincing 6-0 win over redshirt freshman Brent Moore.
The win lifted Smith to 6-1 on the season. He scored a 15-0 technical fall win on Friday against Michigan State, and finished the weekend without surrendering a point.
"We feel like he has a tremendous upside and we expect him to continue to improve," Borrelli said of Smith.
Brucki, a senior who is ranked 14th, scored a last-second reversal to defeat freshman Hunter Bolen, 6-4. The win came two days after he squandered a large lead in falling, 12-10, to his opponent from Michigan State.
"I was happy with the way CJ bounced back from the Friday night match," Borrelli said. "You can get knocked down confidence-wise from a match like that. Today he never quit wrestling in the match, so that was good."
The most-anticipated match of the day came at 149, where Virginia Tech's Solomon Chishko topped Justin Oliver in a showdown of top-10 juniors. Chishko, who eliminated Oliver with a 12-2 major decision last March in the NCAA Championships, took a hotly contested 3-1 win from Oliver on Sunday.
The match was tied 1-1 in the final 15 seconds when the two got into a scramble. After time ran out, the referee reviewed video of the final seconds of the match and then awarded the takedown to Chishko, who is ranked seventh nationally.
It was the first loss of the season for Oliver, who is ranked fifth.
"We had a really good angle of it," Borrelli said. "(The referee) said Chishko hooked Oliver's foot and that's why he changed his call. Justin was in on two or three shots in that match and it was almost a 10-point swing from last year. We're very capable of winning that match."
In the only other match featuring two ranked wrestlers, Virginia Tech's Zack Zavatsky topped Jordan Ellingwood, 7-4, at 184. Zavatsky is ranked seventh, Ellingwood is ninth.
At 157, CMU senior Colin Heffernan, who is ranked 13th, fell, 3-1, in overtime to unranked B.C. LaPrade, a redshirt freshman.
The Chippewas also dropped an overtime match at 285, where Tech's Andrew Dunn scored a takedown 10 seconds into the extra session for a 6-4 victory over Matt Stencil.
Borrelli said he was particularly pleased with two of his redshirt freshmen, Drew Hildebrandt (125) and Dresden Simon (133). Hildebrandt was wrestling in just his second collegiate dual, and Simon in his first.
Both lost by decision, but both acquitted themselves quite well, Borrelli said.
"I was really enthused with the way Dresden Simon wrestled," he said. "He got after it. We were happy with his effort. We saw some good things from Drew Hildebrandt. He was in on a couple really nice shots and just didn't finish them. We're disappointed, our whole team's disappointed, but it's a good time in the season to be disappointed."
VIRGINIA TECH 26, CENTRAL MICHIGAN 6
125: Kyle Norstrem (VT) dec. Drew Hildebrandt, 6-1.
133: Dennis Gustafson (VT) dec. Dresden Simon, 8-4.
141: Mason Smith (CMU) dec. Brent Moore, 6-0.
149: Solomon Chishko (VT) dec. Justin Oliver, 3-1.
157: B.C. LaPrade (VT) dec. Colin Heffernan, 3-1 SV-1.
165: David McFadden (VT) major dec. Logan Parks, 12-4.
174: CJ Brucki (CMU) dec. Hunter Bolen, 6-4.
184: Zack Zavatsky (VT) dec. Jordan Ellingwood, 7-4.
197: Jared Haught (VT) major dec. Jordan Atienza, 13-2.
285: Andrew Dunn (VT) dec. Matt Stencil, 6-4 SV-1.
Players Mentioned
