Iowa State dropped its home dual opener to Drexel 21-16 after struggling with consistency and failing to finish out close matches down the stretch of the dual.

At first, Iowa State appeared to be on pace for a solid victory after a hot start with two major decisions from Dane Pestano at 184 pounds and Marcus Harrington at heavyweight. Sam Colbray was pinned 2:06 into his match at 197 pounds.

At 125, plug in starter and walk-on Jakob Allison, who was filling in for the departed Danny Vega and Jonathan Marmolejo who was withheld from the contest, had a gritty 5-0 loss that only gave Drexel a 9-8 lead.

Coach Kevin Dresser was impressed with the performance of Allison and believed that if all wrestlers give that amount of effort that the team would not have lost the dual.

In what seemed to be a turning point in the dual, 133-pounder Ian Parker fought his way to a 7-5 victory with 1:59 in riding time against Austin DeSanto who Dresser considered their best wrestler.

Following that decision and intermission, Iowa State fans got their first look at 141-pounder Kanen Storr, who is ranked No. 13 per FloWrestling. Storr dominated Julian Flores en route to a 22-7 tech fall.

After those two strong matches, Iowa State led 16-9.

The tide then shifted in favor of Drexel as Trevor Elfvin defeated Iowa State’s Gavin DeWitt in overtime 6-5 at 149 pounds.

Drexel followed that win with two more decisions at 157 and 165 to put Drexel up 18-16 with one match still to come at 174 pounds.

Wrestling at 174 for Iowa State, Luke Entzel competed against Austin Rose with the result of the dual on the line.

Entzel lost 5-3 to give Drexel the 21-16 win and he struggled to create any offense and was left without a takedown scored.

Dresser said that he wants more consistency out of the team, especially the ones that dropped the final four matches along with Sam Colbray, but admits that there are several wrestlers that handled themselves well such as Pestano, Harrington, Parker and Storr.

Dresser is particularly impressed with the work habits of Parker and Storr.

“Those guys get it pretty much year round in the practice room in terms of their approaches to the sport of wrestling,” Dresser said. “They are no shortcut kind of guys.”

With question to whether Colbray’s spot is up for grabs or not, Dresser believes that Colbray has the ability to be a good wrestler, but he was caught in a bad position that led to his pinning.

Dresser believes that there are more wrestlers beginning to buy into the program and starting to eliminate bad practice habits that lead to inconsistency.

Dresser sees this dual as a gage to measure where each wrestler is at.

“I didn’t know what to expect, so I saw some good and some bad,” Dresser said. “We’ve got a lot of things to fix.”