Coach Cunningham on last weekend

Story Published Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Penn State Wrestling Fans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What a great crowd for the Illinois match on Friday night. It was great to see so many people come out to support our guys on Friday. There was close to 4900 people there to watch us beat Illinois for the first time in 53 years. We have only wrestled them 9 times in that time period but some reason they were a tough team for Penn State to get by. Hopefully in the years to come we turn the tide in our direction. Our guys did not look super sharp this weekend but we did beat Illinois and had a great opportunity to beat Ohio State who is one of the top teams in the country so that is something to build on. Friday night Adam Lynch had a great win over a top 12 opponent by just continuing to wrestle in tough positions.

We continue to preach fight to our guys and some of them are listening and it is taking some of them longer but that is the goal and we will continue to preach that as long as we coach here. Hustling back to the center, continuing to move off the bottom, being the aggressor on your feet, shooting your opponent off the mat and not getting shot off, riding hard and turning on top, and being mean( not cheap) but mean. That is a big part of what we tell our guys fight is and that is how we want to be known. It is very easy after a match to assess whether our guys are successful or not-did they fight for seven minutes. Obviously there are some technical things we have to fix and will fix but without fight you can teach technique all day and when push comes to shove you will get shoved.

This weekend is another great test for our guys and great preparation for the National Tournament. It will be a great environment for our guys to wrestle in with the #1 ranked team in the country and then on to Wisconsin for a very good team on Sunday. We look forward to these duals to see if our guys have made adjustments from last weekend.

We are seven weeks from the NCAA tournament so we still have time to make adjustments and we will.

Again thanks to everybody who came to watch us wrestle Illinois on Friday. It would be awesome if for every home match our crowd grew so that we can end the season with over 5000 people showing up to our final three home meets. This is a challenge to our fans to bring people with them and get them excited about wrestling. We will try to put on a good performance so nobody will be disappointed.

In Nittany Lion Wrestling Club news Teyon Ware won two straight matches to make the World Cup team. He will be headed to Russia in March to represent the United States at 66 kilograms. Aaron Anspach, Les Sigman, and Teyon Ware are all preparing to compete next weekend in the Dave Schultz so look to follow their results on the themat.com.

Have a great week

GO LIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Coach Cunningham

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