mg113

It was sarcasm. The Brands mentality is borderline retarded. Brands is a great competitor but I don't really respect him as a coach. In my few years spent keeping up with the sport, it seems like he has a history of f*cking his athletes in order to chase his own success and throws them away when he's done with them. There's no way I would see Cael having one of his wrestlers compete with two torn ACL's.

You heard Lee - F excuses bro. Injuries don't matter, stop being a *****!

I actually did think he had mono, but there was a theory floating around that his opponents had suddenly "figured him out." I remember thinking how absurd that would be - Lee has literally done the same 3 or 4 moves every match for 5 years at that point, you would think his opponents would have picked up on that by then.

Exactly. You're not crazy for thinking something was off with Spencer ever since Midlands that year. His first few matches were normal Spencer, then gasses HARD to Pat glory (who he teched in the second period a month before) and doesn't score a point in the period, then gets dominated by Sebastian (a guy who Lee was 2-0 against, including a major in their last match). In his next match he goes 4-0 against Sean Russell, looking sluggish the whole time. He pins a few scrubs, and got a major against Moisey who he should have easily tech/pinned - again, looking super weak and sluggish the entire time. Gets pinned by Picc (a guy who Lee was 2-0 against, including a pin in their last match). He lost again in the B10 finals to Rivera. He looked miraculously better at NCAA's, but not like his former self. Contrast that with the next two seasons and it's obvious that something was going on with him.

Yeah but this was a documentary not a press conference. Even if he wasn't completely candid about what happened, most athletes are at least somewhat open about their lows in their career, especially for a documentary. Usually an athlete will at least be like "I was dealing with some personal issues at the time" or "I was really banged up for awhile," but to intentionally omit that significant moment in his college career seems bizarre to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziAVn78-2Xk So the BTN released this Spencer Lee documentary, which goes over Lee's entire wrestling history but almost completely glosses over the 2019 season. I remember Lee's losses, which included him getting pinned pretty vividly and I remember them being the top story in all of NCAA wrestling that year. Lots of people wrote him off and said he was done. I also remember Brands and Lee completely dodging questions about what was going on and why Lee somehow went from being a hulk smasher to barely squeaking by against average wrestlers in a matter of a week. The documentary devotes about all of 30 seconds to the losses that year, they showed a few clips and ran a couple quotes about how hard on himself he was but they still don't mention what actually was going on. I really don't care what the reason was, if Brands had just came out and said his knee was acting up I wouldn't have given it a second thought, but to continually and purposely ignore the situation seems bizarre to me. I have never watched a sports documentary that would gloss over that big of a moment of an athlete's career like that, especially one that ended in redemption. What gives?

Yeah, right? Burroughs is going to need some tissues after that one. Hopefully he can get some before the coronanutters hoard them all.

Flying Kimura - Desanto

I still take Dake in the fantasy matchup....but man it was hard to root for him after that.

Gilman might (MIGHT) be ahead of Lee for the time being, but let's not pretend that Gilman (a 0x WC, 0x NCAA champ) wouldn't get beat by Lee (3x WC, should-be 3x NCAA champ). He wasn't even the starter last year. .

If you can't find a way to score on a guy with one arm, maybe you're a little one-dimensional?

I agree but if I had to guess, Brooks has maybe had a slightly weaker schedule. There's also a ranker's delight in Bolen, Lujan, and Hidlay, who have all traded losses too, so that might be keeping a logjam in the rankings. I think if Brooks had a win over one of those guys, he would be ranked first.

A lot of those guys won't score points, unfortunately. Penn state's "points-per-wrestler" will be a lot higher, but probably not higher than Iowa. A lot of the matches Penn state lost were swing matches, so who knows what could happen if they have a perfect weekend.

Healthy enough to score 17 on Decatur.

I've been a diehard Penn state fan since 2011