Franek/Caliendo both go to Iowa

[PaBizon]

A Very “unlackluster” performance by Franek tonight against #3 ranked Peyton Robb of Nebraska winning 5-4 on a big TD with around 40 seconds left in the match. Looked very good on top riding Robb out the rest of the way. Caliendo looked good again easily handling the 16th ranked guy in the country 8-3. Congrats to both.

[Big Bird]

Franek survives his first round match by 4 seconds of riding time. He has looked worse all year, and not just because he's wearing the Hawkeye colors. That being said, no reason he can't be an All American again this year. He has a very manageable path to the quarterfinals and then Teemer, who he has been very close with in the past.

So far, two other returning All Americans who took big pay days to transfer lost in round one in Aaron Nagao and Michael DeAugustino. Glad those guys all got paid, but very ok with them losing.

[Big Bird]

Franek lost in the quarterfinals and will wrestle tonight needing a win to become a 2x AA. He has just 1 takedown in three matches and has rarely committed to a legitimate attack.

Caliendo cruised to the semifinals and looked great in securing a higher placement than last year. Explosive attacks and while his attack rate wasn't crazy, he had a few powerful, fast attacks and that was the difference. He'll have a rematch with Penn State freshman Mitchell Messenbrink, who beat him badly at the B1G tournament.

[HerdBot]

Love Frank Caliendo

[Big Bird]

Franek wins 4-2 and is a two time All American.

[Big Bird]

Franek gets dominated by Shapiro, so he will wrestle for 7th.

Still an AA, but a decent step down from last year.

Caliendo will get somewhere anywhere from 3rd and 6th, which is an improvement

[Big Bird]

Franek winds up 8th after getting blown out by Peyton Robb. Still an All American, but a notable step back this year.

Caliendo gets 4th, so a notable improvement. Will very likely be a 4x AA.

[RadioBison]

Iowa helped to turn our team into shambles in the offseason, and they didn't even finish in the trophies. The first part sucks, but I'm not too sad about that last part.

I'm sure we all processed what happened over the last year differently. In my case, I turned into a staunch
supporter of every Iowa opponent, even to the point of cheering for Penn State over them. And in my personal case, Franek was my #1 guy to cheer against this year. He could have stayed and helped the program through the transition, but he went after greener pastures.

I hope for his sake that the compensation package and wrestling on a bigger stage were worth it. I hope he didn't go to Iowa to get better, because that isn't really what they do there. In my mind, if he had stayed with us, there is a good chance that he could have at least started off as the #2 seed in this one, with the better path that usually goes with it.

That being said, I can't really say that he went backwards this year. The Big Ten schedule is a meat grinder, and it is hard to get through that unscathed. I might even go so far as to claim that his 8th place this year was better than his 4th place last year. I know some of these things are out of his control, but last year he had a pretty easy bloodround match against Zerban (overrated this year), before a good win over Lewan, and a seemingly better win over Robb. However, now that we know that Robb was suffering from what would become a life-threatening infection, it takes a little bit away from that one. This year, he had a win over a very legit Keller (5th place), and his bloodround match was against Downy, who had to go through Blockhaus and Chittum just to get there. His only losses were to Teemer (2nd place, and never beaten by Franek) and Shapiro (3rd place, who some expected to be a 4x champ), and a still very good Robb.

As for Caliendo, even last year, he pretty much only lost to national champs, and even beat one of them. So, it is hard for me to say that his 4th place is a lot better than last year, although I suppose it is a little. At any rate, I think he has a good chance to be a finalist next year with Carr graduating and O'Toole allegedly moving up. So, losing him is still going to sting for a while, but for some reason it doesn't hit me quite as bad. Maybe because he hadn't become the face of the program yet and wasn't a hometown kid.

I should note, when it comes to Penn State, I'm about 50/50 on whether I like the individual guys on the team, but I have to cheer against a team that gets every single big time recruit, and then supplements the ones they miss on by poaching AA's at the expense of smaller schools. I know type of talent isn't coming our way, but at least I like to see it spread around among a few different teams to make it interesting.

[PaBizon]

I cheered for both Franek and Caliendo at Iowa this year. I think both were as good as they were last year and did what was best for them when Kish left. What kid wouldn’t want to try wrestling at a packed Carver Hawkeye arena in the best college wrestling conference and get paid handsomely to do it. I’m glad they went to Iowa and not Oklahoma which was the plan until Iowas checkbook came out. Face it this won’t be the last time NDSU loses wrestlers that get good and then leave for greener pastures as college sports has changed big time. Look what’s happened to both the football and basketball teams recently. As much as people like to think Obe can call a kid in the transfer portal and he’s going to automatically pick coming to NDSU over places like North Carolina, Oregon St or even a Big Ten school like Indiana aren’t being realistic and need to take off the green and gold glasses. The BiZon may get a few transfers but they will most likely be from connections to the new coaching staffs former schools or recruiting areas and/or a kid like Burwick that’s tried the gauntlet of Big Ten Wrestling but just couldn’t quite get it done there. I have nothing against the kids that left. I do still have hard feelings about the way that Kish handled things when he left and will hope that he gets to eat a Karma sandwich down the road.