Ohio forced to forfeit two matches as it lost to fifth-ranked Mizzou.
The No. 25 Bobcats welcomed the No. 5 Mizzou Tigers to The Convo on Saturday evening. The Tigers were highest-ranked team coach Joel Greenlee remembers the Bobcats hosting in Athens in his 17-year coaching career.
Greenlee welcomed the idea of hosting one of the top-ranked programs in the nation, but he certainly noticed the challenge his team faced on its way to a 25-18 loss.
“I think you go out there and wrestle for seven minutes and hopefully good things happen,” Greenlee said. “I wanted these guys to have that opportunity. We were ranked 25th. We weren’t supposed to beat them. You’re just supposed to go out there and wrestle as hard as you can and hopefully good things happen.”
Ohio (3-2, 0-1 Mid-American Conference) took victories in only two of the seven matchups as it forfeited the 184-pound match. Mizzou forfeited the 194-pound match and the heavyweight bout.
A technical fall of redshirt freshman Zak Hassan gave the Tigers an early 5-0 lead, but Ohio claimed it’s first victory of the evening as junior Kagan Squire won a 4-3 decision over Matt Manley, who was ranked 13th in the nation in the 133-pound class. The Bobcats’ second victory came in the form of a 11-4 decision by redshirt senior Harrison Hightower over Cody Johnston in the 165-pound weight class.
Redshirt junior Tywan Claxton lost his undefeated streak as he lost a 6-3 decision to Drake Houdashelt, who remained undefeated. Though Greenlee said Claxton was disappointed with the result, Greenlee thinks it’s best for him in the long run.
“In all honesty, it’s good for him,” Claxton said. “I think when you go a long time without losing a match, your mindset changes a bit from the standpoint of ‘I’m trying to lose or I’m trying to protect my winning streak’. I think that was a little bit of his mindset. When he went out there, you saw him take a little bit of a backseat, but when he got behind, he really wrestled hard. He probably outwrestled the guy for five minutes in the match. That’s why you wrestle duals. This isn’t the national tournament.”
The dual ended with three forfeitures, two from Mizzou and one from Ohio. Greenlee had no one to wrestle at 184 due to an injury to redshirt Cody Walters that occurred before the match and redshirt junior Andrew Romanchik not making the weight at 184, therefore wrestling at 174. Greenlee did not know the reason for Mizzou forfeiting the final two matches of the evening.
Greenlee said the loss was frustrating, but after some tweaking the Bobcats should be able to hit the ground running again.
“We’ve got to get things figured out,” Greenlee said. “We’ve got some guys hurt, we’ve got to get some things mended. I don’t like to forfeit and for us to forfeit, it hurts my pride a little bit, but it is what it is. We were just in that situation. We’re a good team, we’ve got some great guys on our team. We’re like a ten-speed bicycle. We’re not hitting all of our gears right now. If we do that, we’re going to be really good. We just have to figure out how to do it.”
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