Head assistant wrestling coach Corey Luce will be contributing blogs throughout the 2011-12 season.
Written February 9, 2012
Only two weeks left until the post season. We fly out to Cleveland, OH, tomorrow for the UAA Championship. We lost in the finals in the past two years to Chicago by a few points, so we’re hoping to bring a UAA title back to NYC.
The following week we travel to Scranton, PA, to close out the regular+ season. We take on host Scranton, as well as Johns Hopkins in our final conference match.
As we have been stressing since the start of the season, the most important tournament of the year is the conference championships, which will be held in Gettysburg, PA. This is our first time wrestling in the Centennial Conference Championships after our school had made the switch. The team title can be up for grabs, since there hasn’t been a dominant team this season. Our goal is to win the conference championships, and we feel good about a few of our individual wrestlers taking home a title. It would be our first conference championship in school history. We nearly came away with a Metropolitan Conference Championship in 2008, but fell short by a few points to
TCNJ.
Janik Santana-Quintana (125 lbs) has had a great season so far. At this time, he is 22-6 and undefeated in the conference. He will be tested in two weeks against Johns Hopkins when he takes on Paul Bewak, who is also having a great season and is undefeated in the conference. This could be a potential finals match-up with an automatic berth to nationals on the line.
Matt DiGiovanni (141) is having a break-out freshmen campaign. Since moving down to 141 he is 24-14 on the season. Matt has the potential of having a great tournament. He should be seeded in the top three in the conference and could play a dark horse on making it to the nationals on his first try.
David Rice (165) has had nothing short of an outstanding season. He sports a 24-1 record. The only blemish was a loss against a talented freshman from Gettysburg, who happens to be in our conference. Rice is looking forward to that potential match-up. This weight class happens to be the strongest in the conference. There are three ranked wrestlers looking to win a conference championship. Zach Thomson from Gettysburg is ranked #3, Rice sits at #4 and Joe Favia from Stevens Tech is ranked #8. The only wildcard in the conference should probably be given at this weight class.
Gregg Martino (174) is finishing up strong in his last year at NYU and plans on being an All-American this season. Gregg is 23-2 on the season and ranked #9. He has been ranked during most of the season. He is undefeated in the conference, beating the returning Centennial champion from Stevens Tech. His only D3 loss was to Jules Doliscar from Ithaca at the start of the season. Doliscar is ranked #1 at 174.
Jamie Myers (197) is 5-1 on the season. He has slowly been getting back to where he was two seasons ago when he got hurt. His only loss this season was to a conference opponent from Ursinus who is ranked #10 in the country. Jamie knows what he needs to do in order win the conference. He should be seeded #2 depending on his match against Johns Hopkins next weekend. Jamie has the tools to be an All-American this season. He will use the next three weeks to prepare for his final season at NYU.
We are focused on bringing a few of our guys to Nationals in Wisconsin and are using the next three weeks to prepare for the Conference Championships. I feel we have as good a chance as the other teams to bring home our first conference team title. But, we’ll need a total team effort with all 10 of our wrestlers contributing.
Head assistant wrestling coach Corey Luce will be contributing blogs throughout the 2011-12 season.
Written Janaury 3, 2012
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a restful break. The 2
nd half of our season will provide us with a lot of excitement.
We left after Christmas for the Citrus Invitational in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. This tournament featured many top teams in Division II and
III. It was also a great test for our team, considering we had a few wrestlers dropping a weight class. Matt DiGiavanni is now at 141. This weight class hurt us during the first half of the season since we had to give up a forfeit. Matt has settled in well at 141 and had a great tournament. He wrestled a total of eight matches during the two-day tournament and went 5-3.
Dan Gorman moves down to 149 for the second half of the season. He has been bothered by a wrist injury, but has been getting better as time goes on. He should be 100% soon. With Matt and Dan moving down a weight class it makes us a more solid dual-meet team.
Janik Santana (125) placed fifth at the Citrus tournament. He is improving as time goes on. Janik understands the things he needs to work on and once we remedy these problem areas we expect big things from him.
Alex Becker (125) finished 2-2 at the tournament.
David Rice (#4
th ranked) came into this loaded 165-weight class featuring eight ranked Division II and
III wrestlers seeded fifth. He knocked off #3 ranked Joe Hambelton from Cornell in the quarterfinals. Unfortunately, David tweaked a muscle and had to withdraw from the tournament the second day. It was nothing serious, but we didn’t want to take any chances during this time of the season. He’s expected to be in our lineup in the next competition.
Gregg Martino (ranked #8) was our highest placer with a third-place finish at 174. He wrestled tough every match, but fell a little short in the semifinals losing a one- point match to a returning All-American from Upper Iowa.
Patrick Sheehan had a great weekend. He wrestled eight matches and went 5-3. Patrick is going to fill in well at 174 for us next season after Martino graduates.
Overall we’re pleased with every one of our guys. We are moving in the right direction and looking to peak in February.
On a side note, we added a transfer from California, Doug Tomlinson at 184. He’s starting practice with us today and we’re excited to see what he can bring to our team.
Jamie Myers, ranked 10
th at the start of the season, has started drilling and slowly getting back to wrestling. He should be ready to go in a few weeks. We’re excited to get him back in our line-up.
Our next competition is the Williams Invitational in Massachusetts this coming weekend.
Head assistant wrestling coach Corey Luce will be contributing blogs throughout the 2011-12 season.
Written November 18, 2011
This year we brought in a great group of freshmen along with a California transfer who will all see immediate action in our line-up. The first five weight classes could possibly feature a mix of freshmen and sophomores, so we’re excited to see what our underclassmen will bring to the table.
The start of the season began on a positive note. NYU had their first and second Ithaca Tournament champion in program history. The Ithaca Tournament is regarded as one of the toughest DIII tournaments in the country. Janik Santana-Quintana, David Rice, Gregg Martino, and Steve Massey all made the finals. Massey and Rice came away with titles, while Martino and Santana fell a little short in both matches, and finished runner-up. Freshman Sam Friedfeld and Patrick Sheehan both finished one match away from placing.
The second week of competition brought us to Wilkes-Barre, PA (my home town), where we wrestled in the John Reese Duals. We opened up with Oneonta State. Santana-Quintana started the match out strong and pinned his opponent in the third period. Janik has had a great year so far and has a tremendous work ethic. Matt DiGiavanni wrestled his first match as a Bobcat and came through with a win in a tight match. We’re expecting great things from Matt this season. We knew when we were recruiting him he had the potential to make an immediate impact as a freshman. Rice, Martino and Jake Pawlowski followed up with wins that were enough to seal the victory.
We came up flat in our next match against 12
th-ranked Wilkes University. Martino and Rice were the only wrestlers that won. Our final match of the day was King’s College. We ended up splitting wins, winning five bouts each. However, King’s won on criteria. It was a tough way to end the day, but we saw a lot of great things that happened throughout the course of all three matches. Piotr Puchalski won his first match for us. He battled back in a great match against King’s in which he found himself down on points. He continued to wrestle hard throughout the duration of the match and didn’t give up.
Rice and Martino continue to dominate their opponents. Both of them went 3-0 throughout the day and wrestled tough competition. Rice is now ranked #8 in the new D3 rankings and #10 in the NWCA rankings. Martino is now ranked #7 in the D3 rankings. Both individuals expect themselves to be standing on the podium in Wisconsin in March.
Jamie Myers, ranked #10 at the start of the season, is recovering from a thumb injury he sustained at the start of the season. We expect him back in the line-up next semester. This is the first time since our 2007-08 season where we had three ranked wrestlers competing on one team (Steve Hult, Takafumi Hashimoto, and Nick Coleman were the others).
Our next competition is in New Jersey wrestling at
TCNJ on Sunday, November 20.
