Brandon Sorensen has experience with close matches, and he has experience in taking on Penn State’s Zain Retherford.
Sorensen entered the tournament with an 0-5 career record against the Nittany Lion, keeping it close but coming up short every time.
This year’s Big Ten Championships were just a reminder of that; Sorensen fell to Retherford in the finals, 2-0.
“It’s a qualifier, and we have work to do regardless of where we ended up in each individual weight class,” Iowa head coach Tom Brands said. “We’ve got to move forward; we’ve got another tournament.”
After a scoreless first period, the tide of the match changed in the second when Retherford rode Sorensen the entire two minutes, not allowing Sorensen to gain a point for escaping.
In the third period, the exact opposite happened; Retherford escaped rather quickly and secured his riding time for a 2-point victory over the second-seeded Sorensen.
“Not really the match I wanted,” Sorensen said. “If I’m going down, I’ve got to get out. That’s something that I’ve got to think about come my national’s match; maybe we don’t go down.”
Although he lost in the finals, Sorensen remained Iowa’s glimmer of hope throughout the tournament.
The Hawkeyes had just four wrestlers reach the semifinals on March 3, and Sorensen was the only one to punch his ticket to the finals.
Iowa’s 125-pounder, Spencer Lee, was taken out by eventual champion Nathan Tomasello of Ohio State in the semifinals, and Michael Kemerer was pinned by Ohio State’s Micah Jordan in the same round at 157 pounds.
Hawkeye 165-pounder Alex Marinelli, also a No. 2 seed, was upset in his first match by Michigan’s Logan Massa and placed fifth. Marinelli entered the tournament undefeated but left with three losses on his record.
That left Sorensen to carry the load in the winner’s bracket for the Hawkeyes. At the same time, his teammates worked to advance in wrestle-backs.
“It’s just like war out here,” said 141-pounder Vince Turk, who finished sixth after entering the tournament unseeded. “There’s going to be casualties, but you can’t sit there on the battlefield and think about the casualties. You’ve got to move forward, and you’ve got to finish.”
A three-time All-American who has placed fourth, second, and third at NCAAs, Sorensen still has work to do in his last go-round.
After all, Big Tens are the championships for the best conference in college wrestling, but they aren’t the pinnacle of college wrestling. That is reserved for the NCAAs.
As the lone senior in the lineup, Sorensen was given even more of a leadership platform after last year’s nationals. He wants to set the tone in Cleveland and right his wrongs.
For his last tournament, he has a plan.