Greeted by frigid temperatures and even stiffer competition, the North Carolina wrestling team had a less-than-pleasant weekend in northern territory.
The trip began with a 19-17 loss at the hands of Hofstra on Saturday and culminated in a 28-6 beating at No. 19 Rutgers the next day.
“It was a rough trip,” coach C.D. Mock said. “We got up there Friday morning. There was a lot of snow, and our team didn’t wrestle very well at all against Hofstra, which is a team, to me, that we should have beaten on paper.”
The Pride squeezed past the visiting Tar Heels in a see-saw affair that saw the opposing sides take five matches each.
A Hofstra pin in the 133-pound match with Pat Owens ultimately tipped the scales in the Pride’s favor.
For the Tar Heels, freshman Corey Mock and senior Thomas Scotton continued their early-season successes, while redshirt sophomore team captain Nick Shields appeared in his first dual meet since suffering a season-ending injury early last season.
While UNC fared worse at Rutgers, Mock was pleased with the effort he saw against a team that sent four ranked wrestlers to the mat on Sunday.
“Today I felt like we wrestled actually pretty well,” Mock said. “All of our guys wrestled for seven minutes, and they wrestled hard. We just wrestled a much better team than we are, and we got beat by the better team.”
A bright spot for UNC was freshman Antonio Giorgio’s performance. Giorgio picked up a 9-3 decision in the 184-pound match.