WHO: Chattanooga Mocs (2-5)
WHEN: 6:00 PM CT (Saturday, December 10)
WHERE: McKenzie Arena (Chattanooga, TN)
TV: none
ANNOUNCERS: Chris Goforth and Travis Garrard
RADIO: AM 800 KXIC | Hawkeye Radio Network (YouTube)
STREAM: ESPN+ ($)
MOBILE: ESPN app
TWITTER: @Hawks_Wrestling | @IowaAwesome | @IowaOnBTN
NOTE: Don't forget to follow all the action during the game and chat with your fellow Iowa fans in the Go Iowa Awesome discord! (More info here.)
When last Iowa took the mat, it was for a thrilling, back-and-forth dual meet with plenty of drama and emotion against a heated in-state rival. This... won't be that. Iowa heads east to face Chattanooga on Saturday night in a dual that ought to be a bit less fiery than the blood-and-thunder festivities against Iowa State last Sunday. The Mocs are 2-5 on the season and while they do have four wrestlers ranked at their respective weights by InterMat, only one (Ohio State grad transfer Rocky Jordan) is ranked higher than 27th.
Why is Iowa wrestling a road dual against a SoCon team? It's their fourth-ever meeting with the Mocs and the reason Iowa keeps wrestling them is at least in part because Iowa assistant coach Terry Brands used to coach there. He was the head coach for the Mocs from 2002-05, before leaving to join his brother's staff at Iowa when Tom returned to be the head coach in 2006.
| WT | IOWA | VS | CHATTANOOGA |
|---|---|---|---|
| 125 |
Aidan Harris (JR, 0-4) Charles Matthews (SO, 0-1) |
vs | Logan Ashton (SO, 0-7) |
| 133 |
Cullan Schriever (SO, 7-2) Jesse Ybarra (SO, 0-0) |
vs | #27 Brayden Palmer (JR, 5-2) |
| 141 |
Real Woods (SR, 1-0) Drew Bennett (SR, 3-2) |
vs | Dayne Dalrymple (SO, 6-4) |
| 149 | #6 Max Murin (SR, 5-1) | vs | #27 Noah Castillo (SO, 1-0) |
| 157 | #24 Cobe Siebrecht (JR, 5-0) | vs | Lincoln Heck (SO, 3-3) |
| 165 | #14 Patrick Kennedy (SO, 4-1) | vs | Jackson Hurst (SO, 3-4) |
| 174 | #14 Nelson Brands (SR, 2-0) | vs | #16 Rocky Jordan (GR, 5-1) |
| 184 | #8 Abe Assad (JR, 5-1) | vs | #31 Matthew Waddell (SR, 3-1) |
| 197 | #6 Jacob Warner (SR, 4-1) | vs | Jake Boyd (SR, 3-2) |
| 285 | #3 Tony Cassioppi (SR, 6-0) | vs | Logan Andrew (SO, 1-5) |
I'm not going to go with a full weight-by-weight preview for this dual. For an overall prediction, I'm going with something around Iowa 27, Chattanooga 9. If Spencer Lee doesn't wrestle at 125 (he's not listed as an option on the pre-match notes, though he also wasn't listed there against Iowa State and he did wrestle and make his season debut in that dual), I think Chattanooga has a shot to win a match or two at 125-133-141, particularly if Real Woods doesn't go at 141. Iowa has struggled at the lower weights this year and if Lee, Teske, and Woods sit out this dual, wins could be hard for Iowa to come by at those weights, even though the Chattanooga wrestlers there haven't been lighting up scoreboards this season, either.
But I would favor Iowa pretty strongly at 149, 157, and 165, with Siebrecht and Kennedy likely having good bonus point potential in their matches. 174 is an interesting one, with Nelson Brands facing up against Ohio State grad transfer Rocky Jordan. Brands is 2-0 lifetime against Jordan, beating him 3-0 in a dual in 2021 and 5-2 in a match a month later at the Big Ten Tournament. The Mocs also look overmatched at the upper weights -- I expect Assad and Warner to rebound from their losses last week with wins here (and potential bonus points) and I think we'll see Tony Pins live up to his nickname at heavyweight as well.
All told, this dual meet should be relatively low-stress. This is also Iowa's last dual meet for almost a month (they kick off Big Ten competition with Illinois on Friday, January 6). In the interim, they'll compete at the newly-created Soldier Salute event at the Xtream Arena in Coralville on December 29-30 later this month.
I'll post results for tonight's dual meet in the comments below.
