Yawn...another 0-5 Greco day. EDIT: 0-12 tournament

[maligned 529]

Yet another oh-so-painful Greco day for us at the U23 world's today. We're 0-5 with only Jesse Porter at 77kg having a chance to get brought back into the repechage in the upcoming semi's.

Edited November 14, 2018 by maligned

[Coach_J 2,181]

At least we're consistent...

[justafan 123]

Porter guy lost so 0-5 on day 1 and everyone is eliminated. Tomorrow draws don't look very promising we will  be lucky to win 2 matches in the 1st round 

[Ogalthorpe Haywood 399]

They should just cut the Greco program and use those funds for freestyle 

[justafan 123]

Another 0-5 in round 1 for Greco.How much longer do we continue to waste money on Greco?

[maligned 529]

It's bad enough that we're trying to work our way back to credibility. Why do we send mostly second-tier guys to this event that has other nations' best? Literally 0-10. Four guys still have a chance to get brought back into the repechage, but the whole thing feels very disappointing again.

Edited November 13, 2018 by maligned

[LemonPie 1,368]

BUT LINDLAND

[GoNotQuietly 1,175]

Without assigning blame, no head coach in any sport with these results would be retained by their team, right?

[Ching 180]

Hancock and Bey have serious potential. I really don't think it matters much who is the coach at the top, the few guys we have that could win medals need a deep stable of training partners. If Hancock stays in Europe and has good training, he will do good things.

[ConnorsDad 596]

I would expect Schultz to lose as he's 18 years old against some guys who are 23 according to their country and no telling how old actually. We also sent a lot of our second-tier guys. I still think the under-23 World Championships is not to the level of the others as far as fan support. Our Cadet and Junior World teams had decent tournaments, the seniors was below average although not to the point of slitting your throat and obviously under 23 was terrible. I just believe that constantly changing coaches does not bring about the stability necessary to create a winning culture among other things. And whenever you're going to fire a coach you always need to remember who are you going to get to replace them.

[Eagle26 599]

4 hours ago, GoNotQuietly said:

Without assigning blame, no head coach in any sport with these results would be retained by their team, right?

False. Many coaches who are at institutions that do not care about the sport, can have terrible results and can keep their job. This happens quite often in the sport of wrestling... not so much in football or basketball. Right or wrong, I think the general consensus is that America doesn’t care about Greco.

[2td3nf 586]

Hancock got beat fair and square by UKR. That guy was a bull. Hancock's first challenge was a waste, he got torched there.

And just saying this as a fan, did not like Hancock whining about calls the whole match and thought he was very disrespectful to the officials. I want to see another American beat him at 2019 Trials.

  

[maligned 529]

Yikes. I've started to have lower expectations for Greco, but it feels like it just keeps getting worse. We finish 0-12 in Greco at the Senior-level U23 Worlds. 

Lost by "superiority" 7 times (8+ points...a tech in Greco) and decisioned without scoring a point 3 more times. Two losses by decision where we scored a point.

Six losses were to medalists, with our "best" loss being by Sikes at 87kg, 4-2 to the bronze medalist. No other losses were to anyone in the Top 5.

In brackets this size, more than half of losses by non-medalists come to medalists, so we didn't have particularly bad draws.

[justafan 123]

Not sure what to think.Were  so far behind the rest of the world in Greco and we don't  have a system in place to catch them.

[Coach_J 2,181]

This was not an especially gifted or experienced group outside of Hancock and Schultz, and, as was pointed out, Schultz is very young.  The way they were getting lit up and not scoring, though, is a concern as it pertains to their preparation.  Hard to see any silver linings in this performance.  Our system for greco is broken (I say broken because we did win a World senior team title in 2007--something was being down right at that time, and it IS possible to win for us).

[GranbyTroll 453]

2 hours ago, Coach_J said:

This was not an especially gifted or experienced group outside of Hancock and Schultz, and, as was pointed out, Schultz is very young.  The way they were getting lit up and not scoring, though, is a concern as it pertains to their preparation.  Hard to see any silver linings in this performance.  Our system for greco is broken (I say broken because we did win a World senior team title in 2007--something was being down right at that time, and it IS possible to win for us).

How has the situation worsened in such a short time? 2007 was the pre-Olympic year, so it's not like the rest of the world wasn't trying. 

[Coach_J 2,181]

In 2007, the US team had several guys with great folk results (Vering, Ruiz, and Durlacher) along with the tested vets (Byers, Dantzler, Lester).  They were 3rd in the world in '06--right there with the top echelon.  Yes, Russia had not organized itself into the machine it is now, so that was definitely a factor.

Durlacher was in his 3rd straight worlds and Ruiz was in his 4th.  Vering had been on 4 previous World Teams (though not consecutively).  We had some semblance of continuity and trajectory--In short, the program recruited/attracted WINNERS who were competitive in whatever style they tried and they improved year to year.

Of late, it's a revolving door of new faces; basically, besides Robbie Smith, Bisek, and Mango (Bisek being the only medalist), we have little consistency or long-term development of talent.

Right now, we have Coon as our only medalist.  Bey has made some noise at the Junior level but is clearly not now a threat at Senior. Besides Coon, what successful folk guys is greco bringing in?  The Verings and Durlachers? 

Not seeing much creativity here.  And you've got Lindland, who I have pointed out in the past badmouthed wrestling when he was on these same message boards recruiting for his MMA team.  He trashed wrestling because it didn't bring him enough money.  In one of his interviews during our recent horrid World performance, he said he told the guys you have to love this because there's no money in it.  Why on earth would he keep beating on this dead horse?  What's the point?  These guys are well aware of what money is out there, so why keep harping on how poor everyone is destined to be?  Is that really going to motivate guys?  Obviously motivates him, but the guys he's working with?  It's not like the guys in 2007 were rolling in dough.

[NJDan 1,096]

Would the USA do better if it simply required the guy who finishes third at the freestyle trials to move to greco-- kind of like relegation in soccer.

[GoNotQuietly 1,175]

Well, we should stop treating Over-training Syndrome like it is a fake-news Chinese Hoax, and consider periodization of our athletes to actually be rested, healthy, and mentally fresh for their World Championships.  There is an obvious lack of technique focus in favor of overdoing Strength and Conditioning.

[mostTD 35]

1 hour ago, NJDan said:

Would the USA do better if it simply required the guy who finishes third at the freestyle trials to move to greco-- kind of like relegation in soccer.

I second this idea.   Have Greco a month after freestyle trials.

[Buckeyebison 87]

In the past, the freestyle wrestlers who didn’t make it to the national team would slide into Greco. It worked for them. I wondered why they don’t do that much. I know that Schultz and Coon are the only ones who did the both.

 

Kyle Dake did the both before. He was successful. Dave Schultz actually did both for fun.

 

So, why not set up the system so that Freestylers can slide into Grecos if needed to make Grecos more competitive. That way, they could still get money out of that Dream fund. We need the carrots in front of the freestylers for Grecos’ sake?

 

Edit: I also like that NJDan’s idea. We should make it work as well.

[Housebuye 2,438]

Worth noting that this isn’t our U23 A team

We won’t have great results in freestyle either. We have 4 guys who have any shot at a medal. We aren’t sending out A team their either. 

We don’t take U23s seriously, so we shouldn’t expect good results. 

I honestly think our junior freestyle team from this year would fair better at U23s than our U23 team. To put it another way, our junior freestyle team would beat our U23 freestyle team in a dual. 

[bnwtwg 1,065]

(wrong thread please delete)

Edited November 15, 2018 by bnwtwg

[Gantry 1,872]

19 hours ago, Buckeyebison said:

Kyle Dake did the both before. He was successful. Dave Schultz actually did both for fun. 

 

 

Does Dake have a single elite Greco win since high school?  Or greco match for that matter?  I know he did one exhibition match at Grapple at the Garden which he lost, not familiar of any other results for him. 

While I'd like to see more people doing both styles, I just don't see freestylers who can't at the top of the ladder waltz into Greco part time and be contenders on the world stage.   Coon is an exception which imo makes people think it's easier than it is.  His huge size/strength advantage is something you only get at HWT.  

Edited November 15, 2018 by Gantry

[maligned 529]

6 hours ago, Housebuye said:

Worth noting that this isn’t our U23 A team

We won’t have great results in freestyle either. We have 4 guys who have any shot at a medal. We aren’t sending out A team their either. 

We don’t take U23s seriously, so we shouldn’t expect good results. 

I honestly think our junior freestyle team from this year would fair better at U23s than our U23 team. To put it another way, our junior freestyle team would beat our U23 freestyle team in a dual. 

This has been mentioned. But the age group B team from any top 10 greco nation in any age group doesn't come close to doing what we did. It still means something. 

We thought we had no chance at many medals in freestyle U23's last year too, but we ended up having some success despite a really strong field in most weight classes. I wonder if we'll see a surprise or two again.