Iowa opens their home dual meet season Sunday November 9th in at 1 pm Iowa City, as the #2 ranked Hawkeyes host the #12 Ranked Stanford Cardinals. The dual features 14 ranked wrestlers, and 1 match that will feature top 3 wrestlers from both programs.
Don’t Miss: Michael Caliendo VS Hunter Garvin at 165 should be a fantastic match, pitting two top ranked wrestlers against each other.
Keys To Victory: For Iowa, the key to victory is easy, win the matches they are favored in and pick up bonus points where possible. For Stanford, they need to win the close matches. If they can pick up wins at 141, 149, 157, 165, and score a bonus point at 125, they do have a narrow path to victory. For this to happen, just about everything needs to go wrong for the Hawkeyes, which isn’t likely.
125 Kale Peterson or Joey Cruz VS Nico Provo #11 or forfeit
133 Drake Ayala #3 VS Tyler Knox #18
141 Ryder Block VS Jake Consiglio or Chayse Lajoie
149 Kyle Parco #4 VS Jaden Abas #11
157 Jacori Teemer #1 or Caleb Rathjen VS Grigor Cholakyan
165 Michael Caliendo #2 VS Hunter Garvin #3
174 Nelson Brands #5 VS Lorenzo Norman #19
184 Gabe Arnold #6 VS Brook Byers or Luke Duthie
197 Steven Buchanan #1 VS Nick Stemmet #13
285 Ben Kueter #11 VS Peter Ming or Jackson Mankowski
Conclusion: While Iowa is favored in 9 of the 10 matches. There are several bouts that could go either way. I expect Stanford to show up with something to prove and wrestle Iowa real tough. Caliendo vs Garvin has the potential to be the match of the night. Interesting Fact: Stanford 165 lb Hunter Garvin is a former Iowa City West wrestler, where he was a 3X Iowa State Champion. I could see Iowa winning all 10 bouts and taking a 33-0 victory.