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The Daily Tar Heel

Men's wrestling team harbors high hopes for Saturday

Senior Dennis Drury has anchored North Carolina’s lineup at the 197-pound weight class. DTH File
Senior Dennis Drury has anchored North Carolina’s lineup at the 197-pound weight class. DTH File

For two weeks, coach C.D. Mock tortured the North Carolina wrestling team with practice twice a day.

The wrestlers met in the morning to run sprints in Eddie Smith Field House and up the stairs of Kenan Stadium. They came back in the afternoon to practice. Then they ran some more.

Now, Mock is hoping for one last run from his beaten and battered grapplers — this time to an ACC Championship.

Not much will be expected of the Tar Heels (7-8-1, 2-3 ACC) when they enter N.C. State’s Reynolds Coliseum for the championship tournament Saturday. The team has been beset by injuries all season and finished the regular season fourth in the six-team ACC.

But since NCAA Tournament bids are allocated based on how well a wrestler performs at his conference tournament, Saturday offers each of the team’s 10 starters an opportunity to make their season a successful one.

“The season doesn’t really matter,” sophomore 165-pounder Kyle Kiss said. “This is the only part of the season that does matter, so I’m really excited, and I hope we can come out and have a good tournament.”

UNC’s lineup sports three virtual locks to qualify for NCAAs: Thomas Scotton at 157 pounds, No. 18 Dennis Drury at 197 pounds and Ziad Haddad at heavyweight. The team will need to get strong performances from wrestlers in the middle of the team’s pecking order like 133-pounder Jeremy Shaw.

Despite early season struggles, Shaw has turned his senior campaign around, winning his last six bouts and 12 of the last 15.

“He’s wrestled like a man on fire,” Scotton said. “I’ve just noticed such a difference between the way he was wrestling in November and now.”

Shaw’s transformation has been so impressive that Mock said he believes he has a good shot at beating returning All-American Steven Bell of Maryland to win the entire tournament.

“Is there any other school in the ACC that’s thinking Jeremy Shaw is going to win the tournament this weekend?” Mock said. “No, but we do. We’ve watched him; we’ve seen his progression. He’s absolutely capable of it, and in fact, I’m predicting it.”

Mike Rappo, a 141-pounder, is also hoping to overcome early-season struggles on Saturday.

An NCAA qualifier last year, Rappo has spent the year moving back and forth between the starting lineup and the disabled list.

Rather than miss the tournament, Rappo said he plans to tape up his dislocated elbow and see what happens.

“He’s going to have a lot of pain, and he knows that,” Mock said. “It takes an extremely tough human being to not have that affect your performance.”

But despite his teammates’ injuries and the low expectations held by the rest of the league, Shaw said the Tar Heels will thrive as underdogs.

“In a way, the adversity has kind of shaped this team and made us a lot closer and more unified,” he said. “I think that’s going to pay big results come this weekend.”



Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.

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