PISCATAWAY, NJ – Iowa freshman Abe Assad hadn’t wrestled for Iowa since Feb. 2 coming into the first session of the Big Ten Championships. That didn’t stop him.

The 184-pounder won both of his matches in the early Saturday session to advance to the semifinals in his weight bracket.

“We know what we’ve got there,” Iowa head coach Tom Brands said. “We love him. It doesn’t matter how much we love him, he’s still got to do the work out there. He’s done it. Now he’s got a [semifinals] match and we’ve got to be ready to go.”

Assad won both of his matches in the first session by major decision. In the first round, he defeated Maryland’s Kyle Jasenski 12-4. He followed that up with an 8-0 victory over Ohio State’s Rocky Jordan.

Assad is one of seven Hawkeyes to advance to the semifinals after a strong first session for the Black and Gold.

“Overall assessment is we are looking forward,” Brands said, “We have seven in the semis and three on the backside.  We like seeing those bonus points. I like seeing guys ride in tough positions. I like seeing guys in a 0-0 match get back points. I like seeing tough situations come out in our favor.”

Spencer Lee, Austin DeSanto, Pat Lugo, Alex Marinelli, Michael Kemerer, Abe Assad, and Tony Cassioppi will also compete in the second session to go to the finals.

After winning by a 17-3 major decision in his first match of the day, DeSanto managed to hold on for a 1-0 victory over Nebraska’s Ridge Lovett in the quarterfinals.

Lovett went with a very defensive approach, which DeSanto countered well to advance.

“[DeSanto was] calm and cool,” Brands said. “We’ll worry about ourselves. We’ve just got to keep moving forward with him.”

DeSanto faces a tall task ahead of him in Penn State’s Roman Bravo-Young. DeSanto is 2-1 in his career against the second-seeded Bravo-Young. The junior defeated the Nittany Lion twice in 2019, once at the Big Ten Championships and once at the NCAA Championships.

This season, DeSanto was injured during his bout with Bravo-Young and was unable to finish.

The two meet again tonight with the winner advancing to the finals.

Three Hawkeyes fall in quarterfinals

Iowa’s Max Murin (141), Kaleb Young (157), and Jacob Warner (197) all lost in the quarterfinals and now head to the wrestlebacks in a hunt for third place.

Young was 15-3 heading into the tournament, but had lost his last match of the regular season to Wyatt Sheets of Oklahoma State. He’s got a long row ahead of him in wrestlebacks to finish out the conference championships with a bronze medal.

“He’s gonna have to battle,” Brands said. “He’s gonna have to stick his head in there, stick his nose in and everything else. I think he’s tentative out there. He’s waiting too long. You can’t let that clock tick down and then have a guy deep and he leaks out of it. You can’t give up first-period takedowns. We’ve got to be putting our foot down on that accelerator. Too tentative.”

Young have up an early takedown in his loss to Nebraska’s Peyton Robb. He couldn’t recover.

That was a common theme among the three Hawkeyes who lost in the first session — not being aggressive enough.

“Don’t be tentative,” Brands said. “We’ve got to go. Warner, it was position, Young was tentative. You look at Murin, it was too close. We can’t be that close. We’ve got to widen the gap.”

Session two starts at 6:30 p.m. ET tonight, where Iowa will attempt to send wrestlers to tomorrow’s finals.