Ohio State’s Jordan drops ‘careful mode,’ reaches final
ST. LOUIS — After Bo Jordan’s quarterfinal victory in the NCAA wrestling championships Friday morning, he and his coach remained displeased.
Jordan had been too passive. He didn’t pull out the 174-pound match until he got a late takedown. It has been a persistent issue for Jordan, but he eradicated it in the semifinals in dramatic fashion.
Trailing 7-2 headed to the final period against secondseeded Brian Realbuto of Cornell, Jordan got a takedown and near-fall to emerge with a stunning 11-7 victory at the Scottrade Center.
“Sometimes I go into careful mode,” Jordan said. “That causes me to stand in the middle of the mat and not do anything.”
He said he constantly fights that tendency.
“For whatever reason, it worked this time,” Jordan
with a stunning 11-7 victory.
Kollin Moore at 197 pounds and former NCAA champ Nathan Tomasello at 133 lost in their semifinals.
Snyder, a world and Olympic champion, is so dominating that an injury or some strange fluke seem the only possibilities to derail him. The rib injury could have, and that’s why he took the painkiller shots.
“I did it 45 minutes before I wrestled,” Snyder said. “That numbed me up pretty good. I felt it crunching a little bit but it wasn’t bad at all.”
He said he had reservations about taking shots, but the placement of the injury gave him peace of mind.
“When it’s in your ligaments or joints, that’s when you don’t want to do it that much,” Snyder said. “But when it’s in a solid structure like your ribs, then it’s usually no big deal. It holds it together.”
He said he wasn’t in much pain.
Earlier in the day, Buckeyes coach Tom Ryan suggested to Snyder that he should consider withdrawing. Ryan said Snyder refused.
“He loves Ohio State,” Ryan said. “He loves his teammates. That’s why he keeps coming back and is still wrestling for us.”
Jordan will be in the finals for the first time. To advance, he had to overcome passivity that left both him and Ryan displeased after his quarterfinal victory.
“Sometimes I go into careful mode,” Jordan said. “That causes me to stand in the middle of the mat and not do anything.”
He said he constantly fights that tendency and it paid off when he wore down Realbuto.
“He’s so big and strong,” Ryan said of Jordan. “When he makes his opponents feel him and he keeps his forehead and chin on them, he’s so exhausting. We wore on him, and by the end the Cornell kid tried to hit a big move and we caught him on his back. It was all because of the work in the first 6:30.”
Jordan will wrestle for the national title against Penn State’s Mark Hall.
Ohio State won’t unseat the Nittany Lions for the team title. Penn State virtually salted that away in the quarterfinal round. The Buckeyes are in second place with 89.5 points. Penn State has 121.
Moore, a redshirt freshman, lost his match 13-9 to Minnesota’s Brett Pfarr in a backand-forth battle.
“It looked to me that the moment was a little bit big for him, maybe for the first time all year,” Ryan said.
“It didn’t look like he quite had his legs out there, that explosiveness.”
Tomasello lost a heartbreaker when Iowa’s Cory Clark got a takedown with 20 seconds left and held on for a 7-4 victory.
Tomasello was the aggressor, but his only takedown came early in the match.
“He made a couple of positional mistakes,” Ryan said. “He outwrestled the kid. The kid didn’t shoot once. They were all our attacks.
“But if you’re going to attack, you have to finish solid. It should have not been close, but it was.”
Tomasello won an NCAA title in 2015. He finished third last year and endured shoulder rotator-cuff surgery last summer. Tomasello worked his way back and was undefeated and the top seed. Clark will be going to his third NCAA final.
“It’s just been a long wait for him,” Ryan said. “He does everything right. But you learn in life, even when you do everything right, there are no guarantees.”