Husker wrestlers finish fourth at NCAA meet
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BY KARL VOGEL / Lincoln Journal Star
ST. LOUIS — The dark clouds that rolled in over the Nebraska wrestling team Friday lifted a little, but not enough to take the chill off the Huskers’ disappointing weekend.
Battling back from seventh place, the Huskers swept their consolation semifinal matches Saturday morning and moved up in the team standings at the NCAA Championships.
Team scoring leader (through third-place matches)
1. Iowa 109.5; 2. Nebraska 74; 3. Iowa State 72; 4. (tie) Ohio State and Penn State 71; 6. (tie) Central Michigan and Michigan 69; 8. Oklahoma State 66; 9. Cornell 63; 10. Minnesota 61.5; 11. Missouri 48.5; 12. Illinois 40.5; 13. Indiana 39; 14. Hofstra 38; 15. Northwestern 37; 16. Wisconsin 31; 17. Navy 30.5; 18. Pittsburgh 29.5; 19. Stanford 29; 20. Northern Iowa 27; 21. (tie) Edinboro and Maryland 24; 23. American 22; 24. Boise State 21; 25. North Carolina State 19; 26. (tie) Bloomsburg and Cal Poly 18.
Nebraska Individual Results
Consolation semifinals (seeds in parentheses)
125-(3) Paul Donahoe, NU, dec. (4) Tanner Gardner, Stanford, 5-3.
149-(4) Jordan Burroughs, NU, vs. (3) J.P. O’Connor, Harvard, 5-3.
174-(3) Brandon Browne, NU, dec. (5) Brandon Sinnott, Central Michigan, 4-1.
197-(8) Craig Brester, NU, dec. (6) Dallas Herbst, Wisconsin, 9-2.
Third place
125-(3) Paul Donahoe, NU, dec. Mark McKnight, Penn State, 6-3.
149-(4) Jordan Burroughs, NU, def. (5) Josh Churella, Michigan, 4-2.
174-(4) Jay Borschel, Iowa, def. (3) Brandon Browne, NU, 6-4.
197-(7) Hudson Taylor, Maryland, def. (8) Craig Brester, NU, 7-5 (SV1).
Seventh place
165- (6) Jonathan Reader, Iowa State, dec. (5) Stephen Dwyer, NU, 10-7.
Iowa wrapped up its 21st national title on the second day of the meet. Saturday evening, Ohio State and Penn State moved past the Huskers, who finished fourth with 74 points.
NU bounced back Saturday with four early wins, including 125-pounder Paul Donahoe rebounding from a late loss to Minnesota’s Jayson Ness in the semifinals that ended his quest to become Nebraska’s first two-time national champion.
Donahoe controlled Stanford’s Tanner Gardner early in their match and rolled to a 5-3 win before a dominant 6-3 victory against Penn State’s unseeded Mark McKnight in the third-place match.
Even that, Donahoe said, couldn’t erase the sting of Friday’s loss.
“I got little sleep just thinking about it,” Donahoe said. “I felt twice better than that kid, twice as strong, twice as fast, and it’s my fault I wrestled so horribly.
“This (a third-place finish) was nothing special. I’m very disappointed.”
NU coach Mark Manning, though, praised Donahoe for setting an example for the team with his performance at nationals. The junior competed despite partially dislocating a shoulder on March 5, just three days before the Big 12 Championships.
“This kid is something. He never complained, won the Big 12s, came to nationals and got a shot every day and took third,” Manning said. “He wrestled great and never used it as an excuse.”
In the third-place match at 149 pounds, sophomore Jordan Burroughs continued the Huskers’ resurgence with a dramatic late takedown for a 4-2 win against Michigan’s Josh Churella.
With the match tied 2-2 late in the third period, Churella nearly scored a takedown. Burroughs managed to fight it off, grabbing Churella’s right ankle and then, in a flash, turned it into a takedown of his own with 12 seconds left.
“I was thinking about that after I came off the mat. It was a good attempt by him and I thought he was going to get the two (points), so I kept scrambling. I didn’t want to give it up at the end,” Burroughs said.
“I didn’t want losing my last match to hang over my head into November.”
That victory put the Huskers back into second place in the team standings, but losses in their final three matches thwarted any hopes of fortifying that position.
At 165, Stephen Dwyer fell behind 7-1 in the first period of the seventh-place match and never could recover, as Iowa State’s Jonathan Reader notched a 10-7 win that jetted the Cyclones into third in the team race.
Despite earning All-America designation for an eighth-place finish, Dwyer was disappointed.
“When I lost, I heard people tell me, ‘You’ll get ’em next time.’ But the thing is, at nationals there is no next time,” Dwyer said. “If you don’t do everything right, that’s your one chance.”
A pair of Nebraska natives had a chance to help the Huskers’ team positioning in third-place matches, but both Brandon Browne of Plattsmouth and Craig Brester of Howells dropped heartbreakers.
Browne trailed Iowa’s Jay Borschel 5-1 with 1:05 left in the match and couldn’t mount enough of an offensive charge to make a difference. In the final nine seconds, Browne scored both an escape and a takedown, but Borschel survived the flurry for a 6-4 win.
The last hope rested on the shoulders of Brester, who had won three straight consolation matches against ranked opponents.
He led Maryland’s Hudson Taylor 4-1 and had a riding-time advantage of nearly four minutes before Taylor notched a reversal with seven seconds left in the second period.
Taylor took a 5-4 lead with a takedown midway through the third, but Brester gained the riding-time bonus to send the match to a sudden-victory period.
There, Taylor shot in quickly for a single-leg attack and took Brester down just 16 seconds in to end the match with a 7-5 score.
Manning said Brester’s loss was indicative of the type of weekend the Huskers had and also of just how much of a gap the team still has to close if it hopes to contend in the future with the likes of Iowa.
“We had a good day, but that last match was bitter. We beat ourselves,” Manning said. “We can obviously do better. Call it maturity, but you can’t all of a sudden go from 15th in the country to national champions. It just doesn’t happen that way. It’s a process, and we’re in that process of figuring it out.”
Donahoe, however, had no problem figuring out what he needed to do to move closer to his goal of a second national title.
“I’m just going to train twice as hard,” he said. “I’ve got one year left and I’m going to be hungry again.”
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