By Courtney Baumann
BLOOMINGTON, Indiana – A placard in Iowa Gold will be added under “Big Ten Champions” in the Iowa wrestling room. Another will be taken down and have “17” etched into it.
Iowa seniors Thomas Gilman and Sammy Brooks earned the right to the title in Indiana’s Assembly Hall at the Big Ten Championships on Sunday afternoon.Gilman’s and Brooks’ titles were not enough to propel Iowa to first place as a team, though. The Hawkeyes finished in third, 27 points behind first-place Ohio State and trailed second-place Penn State by 17.5 points.
Even so, the individual victories could not come at a better time, just two weeks before Iowa heads to St. Louis for the national championships.
“It’s a steppingstone. There’s a lot of work to do … A Big Ten title is a big deal, but it’s just a step along the way,” Gilman said. “I wrestle whoever is out on the mat. I want to wrestle the best guy … Whoever they put across there, I’ll wrestle them. It could be King Kong, I don’t care.”
Gilman’s route to his last chance at a Big Ten title was direct and precise, just as he is. He won by fall in the quarterfinals, earned a major decision in the semifinals, and earned his seventh career win over Nebraska’s Tim Lambert with a 4-0 decision in the finals.
Brooks started his competition in similar fashion. Both Hawkeyes had first-round byes, and then Brooks won by fall over Minnesota’s Bobby Steveson in the quarterfinals.
He followed his dominating first match with wins over the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds in the semifinals and the finals.
The title was his second in a row, making him the first back-to-back Big Ten champion since Matt McDonough in 2011-12.
This confidence boost heading into nationals is due to their performances, not their titles. Neither Gilman nor Brooks care very much, if at all, about the honor.
That’s something they can worry about when they’re older. Right now, it’s not the goal.
“For me, I have to think about the process,” Brooks said. “I’ll look back at the medals eventually, but I think if I’m focusing on the process and the every day, then the other stuff will work out, and I’ll have the happy-go-lucky feeling when I’m done.”
For as many individual champions Iowa crowned, there were an equal number who could not get the job done in the first-place match. Senior Cory Clark and redshirt freshman Michael Kemerer both finished in second after going undefeated in the first two sessions of the tournament.
Clark, the defending Big Ten champion at 133 pounds, lost a 5-4 decision with one second left to Ohio State’s Nathan Tomasello. The No. 1 ranked wrestler escaped from Clark’s ride as time expired, earning the go-ahead point. An official review confirmed the call.
Kemerer, on the other hand, fell for the second time this season to Penn State’s Jason Nolf, who was named Big Ten Wrestler of the Year. Were it not for Nolf, Kemerer would have an unblemished record this season.
Four others had work to do in the consolation bracket on Sunday. Brandon Sorensen won two matches to take third place after dropping his bout with Ohio State’s Micah Jordan in the semifinals the night before. He pinned No. 5 seed Kenny Theobold in the first period of the consolation semifinals and did the same to Michigan’s Zac Hall in his final match.
It may not have been first place, but third is somewhat of a consolation for the work Sorensen put in over the weekend.
“It helps the team with team points, and it’s just giving up on myself when one thing goes wrong. It’s continuing to move forward, and that’s what I did,” Sorensen said. “The thing is, just keep wrestling. Keep doing the thing you’ve been doing your whole life.”
Alex Meyer put together a 4-2 weekend to finish fifth. Cash Wilcke went 2-3 to finish eighth. Although he made it to the podium, Wilcke did not qualify for nationals, as seven of his teammates did. While some Big Ten weight classes have nine allocated spots for nationals, 197 only has seven.
However, 141 is one of the weight classes that does, and even after a rough start to the tournament, senior Topher Carton took advantage of that.
Carton lost two of his first three matches, which would have disqualified him in other weight classes. Because there were nine national bids, though, a mini bracket was created to determine who would get the last spot. Carton won two matches to book a trip to St. Louis.
“After things started to not go my way, just bonehead mistakes, I had to kind of dig myself out of it a little bit,” Carton said. “You can’t leave anything up to chance. You can’t leave it up to a committee. You have to wrestle your way into this tournament. It was big for moving forward, big for my psyche.”
Iowa head coach Tom Brands will fight for two more Hawkeyes, Wilcke and Joey Gunther, to be selected as a couple of the 49 at-large national qualifiers who will be announced on Tuesday.
“We’ll do a lot of work tonight, with Wilcke and Gunther in particular,” Brands said. “We’ve got seven going for sure, and we’ll work on 197 and [1]65. I think I have a good case for both of them.”