IOWA CITY — No. 12 Iowa State dropped its second meet of the season to in-state rival No. 2 Iowa with a score of 21-15. No. 4 ranked heavyweight Yonger Bastida and senior Zach Redding both secured their first victories of the season.
Going into the Cy-Hawk dual, both teams knew there was going to be something out of the ordinary and that did happen.
With the match tied at six, No. 10 157-pounder Paniro Johnson took on Iowa’s No. 1 Jacori Teemer. Not much was going on in the match until Johnson had Teemer in a weird position. Teemer managed an escape but came up noticeably limping.
Teemer was down and talking to trainers before attempting to finish the match, but he was taken down by Johnson quickly and had to forfeit by injury. Iowa State took a 12-6 lead, with a lot of toss-up matches in the higher weight classes.
“Well, we never really got to see that matchup,” Iowa State head coach Kevin Dresser said. “Nobody wants anybody to get injured. It was just kind of a crazy dual meet.”
Following the weird match, sophomore Connor Euton would take on No. 2 Michael Caliendo.
Euton was in control of the first half of the match and held a 4-2 lead after the first period. In the second period, Caliendo pulled off a reversal and Euton had an escape, but Euton stayed down after the escape.
After the injury, Euton attempted to stay in the match. Euton wrestled tooth and nail to upset Caliendo but ended up dropping the match 12-7 after multiple Caliendo takedowns.
“[Euton] was pretty good. He had a good match,” Dresser said. “He dinged up his knee pretty good and had to suck it up for a while. I’m guessing he will be sitting for a while.”
Euton has had some tough matches to start the season, including when he faced Stanford’s No. 8 Hunter Garvin. He lost that match 10-3 and now has lost to the second-ranked 165 wrestler Caliedo.
With the score at 12-9 in favor of Iowa State, 174-pounder Aiden Riggins had a chance to extend Iowa State’s lead and give cushion before some tough matches at 184, 197 and heavyweight.
Unfortunately, Riggins had to deal with Iowa senior Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy was in complete control from the jump. Riggins surrendered a takedown right away and that set the tone for the rest of the match.
Kennedy was up 12-3 to start the third period and tallied bonus points when he ended up winning 19-4 and by technical fall.
“Riggins has got to figure it out a little bit,” Dresser said. “This is a confidence issue sport. He started out with a really good guy from Stanford and lost a tough match and then he lost a really tough match against Navy. Sometimes it’s like being a baseball player. When you go 0 for 21, but you’re still a good hitter, you have to figure it out.”
This loss started a domino effect for the next two matchups as No. 10 Evan Bockman and No. 20 Christian Carroll both were beaten by their respective ranked opponents.
Even though the match was out of reach for Iowa State, Bastida was able to make his season debut. He took on No. 13 Ben Kueter, who wrestled Bastida extremely hard.
“Yonger [Bastida] did a really good job,” Dresser said. “He hadn’t really wrestled a match since the bad Friday down at the NCAA tournament, so to come out in this atmosphere and wrestle a young buck in Kueter, I thought that was great for him.
Iowa State is back in action at the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational on Dec. 5-6.
