Although plagued by injuries and illness, the Bulls' wrestling squad placed fifth at the Oklahoma Gold Classic on Saturday led by some less familiar grapplers.
Bulls' head coach Jim Beichner felt the pressure of the tournament increase throughout the week as he witnessed his players' health diminish.
"It was a solid tournament we ended up taking fifth place, but unfortunately we did not have our full line up," Beichner said. "We had injuries and illness hit us late in the week and they prevented us from bringing our full team."
The sole Buffalo wrestler to take home a title was senior captain Mark Budd. This tournament notched his second championship of the year and he currently holds an undefeated 8-0 record. The 133-pound grappler had a bye for the first round and then defeated Brown's Eli Harris 13-4 by major decision in his first match of the day.
In the semi-finals and finals Budd took two solid wins from Army's William Simpson and Matt Kyler. Army's Kyler was able to hold on until Budd defeated him for the championship, 6-1 in overtime.
"Budd has been on roll," Beichner said. "He wrestled two really tough kids from Army and beat them both. He was our stand out wrestler for the tournament."
Freshman Andrew Stella made his collegiate wrestling debut, as he placed sixth in the 141-pound division. Stella continued past Army's Lief Gilsdorf when Gilsdorf suffered an injury and later defeated Kent State's Drew Lashaway in a 3-2 match.
"It was his first tournament off a redshirt year and he did a decent job," Beichner said. "(Stella) had one of the better tournaments today."
Also placing for the Bulls was Junior Mike Ragusa, who took fourth at 165-pounds and senior Ray Lamb captured fourth at 197-pounds. Juniors Nate Rock and Jeff Parker claimed fifth at the 174-pound and heavyweight classes respectively.
"Lamb did a nice job for us at 197 pounds," Beichner said. "And Ragusa could have been in the finals but ended up losing a tough match in overtime. He had a pretty solid tournament too."
Oklahoma won the tournament with 143 points, while Mid-American Conference foe Kent State (109.5 points), Bloomsburg (107.5) and Army (85 points) all nudged out the Bulls' 63 points.
"We still finished about in the middle and for leaving so many guys home we could have done worse," Beichner said. "The guys that were there fought hard. The matches were very close, each and every one of them. We did some good things and we did some bad things but, there are certainly things we can build upon."
Beichner and the Bulls are realizing their strengths and weaknesses.
"Our conditioning has always been good," Beichner said. "I don't think we are losing any matches because of our conditioning, that's not an issue for us. We had ups and downs in the tournament and we need to be a little more consistent. There are still some technical issues we need figure out and intensity needs to be picked up. We plan on working on that in the near future."
Although the past two tournaments do not count towards the Bulls' MAC record, Beichner noted that they are still crucial to gauging the team's success.
"Anytime you get on the mat you should see some improvement and we should be getting better," Beichner said. "I saw some improvement and then I saw a couple set backs. These tournaments don't mean a ton, but they are giving us a good indicator of where we are at and where we need to go, so that's why we are there."
The Bulls are determined to prevent this first challenge from holding them back.
"We were not healthy for this tournament but sometimes that is out of our control," Beichner said. "We need to sharpen up skills and we need to get healthy. We need to stay healthy, get everybody in the line up and get everybody where they are supposed to be."
The Bulls return home to Alumni Arena and take on the Princeton Tigers in their first meet of the season. The dual-meet is scheduled for Saturday at 1 p.m.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
