By Mark Walters
ST. LOUIS-It was a record-setting NCAA tournament for the Pride, but not the kind to put in the family photo album.
For the first time since 2002, Hofstra had no All-Americans. It finished 27th in the nation with 22.5 points. Iowa won its second straight team title with 96.5, 4.5 ahead of Ohio State. Iowa State and Nebraska rounded out the top four.
Three Pride wrestlers made the quarterfinals, and four were one win shy of achieving All-American status, but with four freshmen competing in their first national tournament, the CAA Champion Pride was simply overmatched.
“It’s a grueling tournament,” head coach Tom Shifflet said. “It’s a rollercoaster.”
While Shifflet’s team failed to finish where it wanted, the coach was pleased with his team’s effort.
“It wasn’t that we wrestled down or wrestled poorly. It was more who we wrestled.”
Eight Pride wrestlers faced a total of 12 seeded wrestlers; four of these were ranked no. 1 in their weight classes and two went on to win titles.
Hofstra certainly had an uphill battle in getting three wrestlers into Friday evening’s quarterfinal round, as Ryan Patrovich upset Cornell’s top-ranked and undefeated Mack Lewnes.
“I didn’t feel any extra pressure,” Patrovich said of being the talk of the town. “It was actually relief that my match was over and I came away with the win.”
The 165-pounder then beat North Carolina’s Keegan Mueller 6-4 before he ran into the eighth seed, Jonathan Reader from Iowa State. The Cyclone decided Patrovich 5-2, sending him to the consolations, where Patrovich became Hofstra’s last shot at an All-American as Lou Ruggirello, PJ Gillespie, and Jonny Bonilla-Bowman had all been eliminated from their brackets one win away from reaching the podium. Patrovich knew he was his team’s last shot.
“I tried not to let that effect me,” Patrovich said. “I don’t think it did, but I could see it wasn’t going good for us in the All-American round.”
Missouri’s fifth seed, Nick Marable, had gotten upset in the first round and was rolling through the wrestlebacks. In their 165-pound All-American-clinching bout, Marable was tied with Patrovich, but ride time gave the Tiger the 3-2 decision.
Hofstra had gone from 8th in the standings after Thursday’s two sessions to 11th at noon Friday to 17th in an hour.
“It’s the national tournament,” Shifflet said. “Anything can happen here.”
The lighter weights were no different, as Steve Bonanno, Justin Accordino, and Ruggirello all encountered pitfalls in the form of top-ranked wrestlers.
After his first-round win over Maryland’s Brendan Byrne, Bonanno entered the 125-pound wrestleback round courtesy of an 11-0 loss to Cornell’s second-ranked and eventual champion, Troy Nickerson. Bonanno then dropped a 6-5 decision to Ohio State’s Nikko Triggas, which set off the Pride’s Day 2 nightmare.
Justin Accordino decided NC State’s Joe Caramanica in sudden victory but exited the tournament when he lost to Michigan’s top-ranked Kellen Russell 8-2. Accordino was down just two at the start of the final period but Russell quickly escaped Accordino and scored a takedown with 10 seconds left to win 8-2 with ride time.
Ruggirello’s championship dreams ended when he lost 6-4 to Michigan State’s top-ranked and eventual champion Franklin Gomez, putting the defending Gorrarian Award winner against Illinois’ third-ranked James Kennedy. But ride time continued to plague the Pride. It would prove to be public enemy number one.
Ruggirello needed to ride Kennedy for only seven seconds to tie him, but the Illini junior miraculously scored a takedown in the final seconds to decide Ruggirello 5-2, ending his All-American hopes.
“It was disappointing,” Ruggirello said. “My goal this year was to be a national champ.”
Coach Shifflet was disappointed that his 133-pound junior was unable to reach the podium.
“He’s [Kennedy] really, really strong on his feet and we’re able to contain him for most of the match but once or twice we’re unable to take him down late to tie it up,” Shifflet said. “Lou put a lot of time in to become an All-American this year, and I’m disappointed not with his effort but disappointed with things because I think he worked hard enough to be there and he deserves it.”
Ruggirello’s loss to Gomez and Kennedy was just the beginning though, as Gillespie lost in the quarterfinals 3-2 to Navy’s Bryce Saddoris and 7-5 in the wrestleback to Oregon State’s Heinrich Barnes. The Long Beach, New York, native admitted to an increasing anxiety as he advanced, becoming the only unseeded 149-pounder in the quarterfinals.
“It felt good to be considered the underdog,” Gillespie said. “I knew I could stay with anyone in the weight class but I just had to go out there and prove it and show everyone that I was coming to compete and that I wasn’t just some unseeded wrestler, some bum.”
As Ruggirello, Gillespie and Patrovich were reaching the quarterfinals, Bonilla-Bowman was steam-rolling through his 157-pound wrestleback bracket, putting together quite a run after losing a 15-12 barn-burner to Tennessee Chattanooga’s Joseph Knox. He rattled off three consolation round wins, including a 12-3 major decision over Northwestern’s Jason Welch. But the junior said he had trouble staying in it. It was difficult for Bowman to keep up his adrenaline in between rounds. He lost 6-5 to Missouri’s Michael Chandler, falling victim to ride time as it was 5-5 as time expired.
“In my third match I felt pretty good. If they woulda had the All-American match right after that I woulda smoked that kid [Chandler]. I wrestled that match, felt great and then they hit the reset button on me.
“I didn’t stay in it this year. I got scared,” Bowman admitted. “That’s what happened.”
Bowman said he knew when he went to the hotel between sessions that everything just shut down. He put in 45 minutes of hard wrestling with Pride assistant coach Terry Madden before his All-American-qualifying match, but it wasn’t enough to prepare him for Chandler.
“Jonny loses, he does a great job, wrestles some pretty tough guys coming back through and runs into Chandler, who he’s struggled with in his career,” Pride assistant coach Rob Anspach said. “Not that you’re gonna have an easy match in an All-American round, ’cause youre talking about the 12 best guys left in the tournament.
“You’re gonna have to beat a good guy to become an All-American, and unfortunately we just couldn’t get it done.”
Like Shifflet, Anspach didn’t think it was a lack of effort.
“It’s frustrating,” Anspach began. “You see how close you are, and you sit there then all the things come back to you about everything you could’ve done differently to get that win.”
Bowman, a two-time CAA champion, said he needs to work on his consistency problems next season.
“I gotta fix that,” Bowman began. “Or I’ll end up with what I got this year which was nothing.”
Nothing is exactly what returning All-American Alton Lucas left St. Louis with as the 174-pound senior went 0-for-2, losing 7-6 to Iowa State’s Ryan Burk and 2-0 to Bucknell’s Shane Riccio.
Shifflet was most disappointed with the way his senior went out, citing a lack of effort.
Hofstra’s final NCAA qualifier, sophomore Joe Fagiano (197), lost 10-3 in the first round to the No. 1 seed, Nebraska’s Craig Brester, who went on to finish second. He then decided North Carolina’s Dennis Drury 11-10 before dropping an 8-3 decision to Cornell’s Cam Simaz.
Anspach talked about the disappointment, and how he looks at it as a coach.
“The one-point losses, the two-point losses, if we would’ve spent a little more time on this situation, if we would’ve brought him in one extra time. You start replaying the whole season to figure out what went wrong and why we lost all those matches so close.”
It was a tournament to forget for the sake of results, but the Pride will likely walk away from this one with their heads up.
“I think having those guys get the experience out there, that’s great,” Shifflet said. “Not only that, but they won matches. It gives you a pretty good idea that they can hang with the best in the country.”