Pulling the strings

John Stutzman stands in the center of the Ed Michael Wrestling complex inside Alumni Arena. It’s a Monday evening practice in late October – five days before his Buffalo wrestling team opens its season against Campbell in Blues Creek, North Carolina.

The second-year head coach rests his back and arms up against the blue padded wall. His eyes scan the more than a dozen different matches on the floor all around him. The Bulls square off with one another in pairs throughout the entire room, their individual battles often intersecting each other. Stay alert at all times – a flying limb of wrestler might come flying in your face.

A pounding sound comes from the fitness room off to the side of the mat room as one wrestler beats a tire with a sledgehammer. Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” blasts over the speakers. From an outsider’s perspective, the whole thing looks somewhat disorganized.

But someone is indeed pulling the strings.

Stutzman pushes himself off the wall and walks over to two of his wrestlers battling for position on the mat.

“Set the pace. Set the pace. Dominate. Dominate,” he commands. “This guy is tired.”

But for all the Bulls’ effort in practice, their season won’t end in a title. They won’t send a single wrestler to the NCAA Championships. They won’t even win a single match in the Mid-American Conference Tournament. This won’t be because of their talent level, but because of a one-year postseason ban handed down by the NCAA for low Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores.

Stutzman looks at his assistant coaches, who are also walking around the room yelling orders. Assistant coach Bryce Hasseman even wrestles a student on the mat.

“Just the intangibles these guys are bringing allows me to sit back and coach and kind of watch the room a little bit better,” Stutzman said.

And Stutzman needs to see the whole room. The head coach is worried about more than how Buffalo fairs in a late October practice or even the entire 2014-15 season. He’s worried about how Buffalo will fair for the next decade and beyond.

“The big picture is how do we make this program relevant for the next 50 years? And that’s my job,” Stutzman said.

Stutzman is only in the second year of his “big-picture” plan to make Buffalo wrestling a national powerhouse. He may be overconfident about his goal – he discusses Buffalo’s future championships not as a possibility, but as a certainty.

He has experienced winning on the mats of Alumni Arena, first hand as a 150-pound wrestler who graduated as Buffalo’s all-time wins leader. But he’s yet to win off the mat. Buffalo went just 3-17 and failed to win a Mid-American Conference dual meet in Stutzman’s first season last year.

“At the end of the day, [the players] have to do a good job of representing themselves and the university and making sure our alumni and our administration know that we’re not dead,” Stutzman said. “We’re going to be better this year ... So we’re not dead, we’re thriving.”

To some though, it might look like the Bulls are ‘dead.’

The NCAA banned the Bulls from postseason play due to a four-year APR score less than the necessary score of 930. The APR is a metric that calculates a program’s eligibility and retention of student athletes.

Buffalo has won just one MAC dual meet the past two seasons. Former head coach Jim Beichner was fired in March 2013 after 17 years at the helm of the program and a one-win season in which two now former wrestlers were charged with third degree assault. UB Athletics doesn’t necessarily need the program, as the MAC does not mandate wrestling.

But Stutzman says he has the tools and support to mold the Bulls into one of the top programs in the country. The Ed Michael Wrestling Complex in Alumni Arena received a $400,000 renovation in 2011. He said he has confidence in Athletic Director Danny White – the man who hired him in May 2013.

“We have the resources, we have the facilities, we have the administration, we got the backing. It’s my job to put us there,” Stutzman said after a loss to Northern Illinois last season.

Stutzman and his wrestlers frequently use the term “culture change” when talking about the program; that change goes for both on and off the mat. He wants a team that can overcome its lack of skill with effort. He wants athletes who only care about wrestling and school. He wants a different approach than the one that led the postseason ban.

Stuztman’s goals are long term. That’s why the postseason ban doesn’t bother him much. He’s concerned with more than just this season.

***

Stutzman ended his first regular season in Buffalo in tears.

The head coach became emotional at the post match press conference after Buffalo’s season finale loss to Northern Illinois last season that dropped the Bulls’ MAC record to 0-8.

“I’m crushed,” he said after being asked about the winless conference record, tears forming in his eyes. “You see it in my face? It hurts.”

For a man that went 95-27 as a wrestler for the Bulls, Stutzman took last season’s 3-17 finish particular hard.

“I hate losing. I’m not loser. We’re not losers,” he said at the press conference, his voice choking up. “With a 3-17 record, that freakin’ stinks. That hurts. It hurts me every night. I go home and I think about it.”

His visions for Buffalo don’t leave him when he exits the Ed Michael Wrestling complex after practice. He said he doesn’t sleep at night when thinking about how to get his wrestlers to the national tournament. His search to fulfill his vision for the program is a 24/7 job. He laments the fact he’ll see his daughter only twice this week.

***

Max Soria had a decision to make this summer.

The Buffalo wrestler and two-time NCAA Championship qualifier could either stay in Buffalo for his senior season – losing a chance to go to the national tournament for a third time – or transfer.

“Over the summer I was tied up in my head,” Soria said. “It was hard to just give up all I’ve been wrestling for which is a national tournament so obviously I wanted to possibly maybe go somewhere and get it done … But I figured my heart’s in Buffalo. I’ve been here for the past four years so I’d rather finish it out here and help these younger guys be a part of it.”

And the lightweight wrestler has worked to help the younger athletes on the roster, sharing his national tournament experience. Now, when Stutzman lists off his assistant coaches, he mentions Soria.

“We got Max Soria down that with the light guys even though he’s still a student-athlete, he’s actually like a coach,” Stutzman said.

Senior Wally Maziarz also returned to Buffalo for his fifth season despite the ban. Maziarz grew up in nearby North Tonawanda. He figured “Buffalo is home” and that he could be a part of the program’s rebuilding process.

“I believe that if these guys buy into what [Stutzman is] teaching and coaching, these guys are going to go far and he’s going to have a top-20 program in the next couple years,” Maziarz said. “I just want to be a part of that and leave my mark in Buffalo where the success is going to be.”

Soria and Maziarz have bought into Stutzman’s message. They show up to practice – some of which start at 6 a.m. – despite the fact their season has no chance to end in a trip to the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri for the NCAA Championships.

And the problems started before Stutzman took the job at UB.

Former Buffalo wrestlers Justin Lozano and Clayton Reeb were charged for third degree assault for assaulting another student on South Campus Feb. 16, 2013. Reeb left the team two months prior to the assault. Lozano was kicked off the team following the incident.

Former wrestler Desi Green was on the pace to become Buffalo’s all-time wins leader before he was kicked off the team prior to his senior season. Green told The Spectrum in 2011 it was because of marijuana use.

Those incidents played a part in Buffalo’s low APR scores and subsequent postseason ban. The current staff and players don’t feel they deserve the punishment.

“We believe something was taken from us that these guys in this program didn’t deserve to happen,” Stutzman said.

Buffalo has adopted an “us against the world mentality,” according to Stutzman. The players even use the ban as motivation.

“It kind of sucks about the whole NCAA thing, but that’s got to be your ultimate motivation: that something was taken away from us,” Maziarz said.

***

Stutzman describes his system as “grinding.” It focuses less on technique, and more on positions. Buffalo teaches its wrestlers just four moves. Stutzman thinks perfecting four basic moves is better than knowing “a thousand.” He relates his philosophy to a football team who constantly runs the ball.

“Like when you’re playing football, everyone knows we’re a running team and what’s coming,” Stutzman said. “Stop it. That’s kind of my mindset.”

Stutzman went 97-56-1 in eight seasons as the head coach at Bloomsburg University – a school with fewer than 10,000 undergrads and wrestling as its only Division I sport. Stutzman had just 3.5 scholarships to disperse with the Huskies, and his teams had to fundraise $100,000 every year to compete. He describes those teams as “blue collar.”

“It was against the world because we were the smallest and most underfunded team in the country and we beat everybody,” Stutzman said. “Because we had a chip on our shoulder and we created our edge, and that’s what were doing here.”

Emulating a small program is a far different approach than the rest of Buffalo’s athletic department that strives to become “America’s Next Big-Time College Athletics brand.” Stutzman and the athletic department’s approaches may even seem to contradict one another.

But Stutzman’s end game is the same as UB Athletics’ – become a top-tier program.

Stutzman is quick to point out that he’s not speaking in hypotheticals about building Buffalo’s wrestling program, saying, “It ain’t going to happen one day, it’s going to happen soon.”

“If our goal is top be a top-20, then I’m selling myself short,” Stutzman said. “I want to win a national championships. I want to have national champions. I want All-Americans. We want NCAA trophies.”

His goals may seem lofty – especially for a program that’s only championship is a 1978 Division III title and produced just one Division I champion wrestler. But his players seem to share their head coach’s vision and optimism about the future.

Maziarz said he returned to Buffalo so when the team is successful down the line, he’ll know he helped make it happen. Sophomore Mike Silvis talks about putting Buffalo “on the map.” One wrestler at practice talked about getting a UB logo tattoo on his lip so he can show it off when he wins a national championship.

Stutzman knows his vision cannot come to fruition without the wrestlers actually taking the mat.

“How does that happen? It’s these guys coming through today, these recruits, they’re the foundation,” Stutzman said.

And he certainly has a lot to build that foundation with, as the roster includes 22 freshmen. Six of them started this past weekend – which Stutzman calls “unheard of at this level and the conference we wrestle in.”

But Stuztman is just hoping to see growth from his team this season. He says improvement may not come in the win column, but he guarantees it will come in terms of energy and effort.

Things might be looking up the Bulls as they have already matched their win total from last season in the open weekend of the season. They hope injured wrestlers Maziarz and senior Tony Lock will return by the end of November. Buffalo is aiming for former Bloomsburg star Colt Cotten to join the lineup in January. The redshirt freshman transfer currently watches Buffalo’s practices on crutches while recovering from a torn LCL.

But the Bulls could also easily go winless in the MAC again. The preseason poll picked them to finish last in conference. They were the only team to not receive a first place vote. Most of their athletes were in high school this time last year.

Stutzman and his wrestler’s talk of championships could all be smoke. Buffalo may never win a championship or even reach ‘top-20’ status. Stutzman’s vision might go unfulfilled.

But one thing seems to be certain: He is thinking long term. And although Stutzman is thinking about the future during a late October practice, he’s taking everything one day at a time.

“I like where we’re at but we just got make sure we’re progressing every day and it starts tomorrow morning again at 6,” he said.

email: sports@ubspectrum.com