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Pitt's wrestling season is officially underway and while the Panthers have many question marks surrounding the team, they are at least off to a good start.
Pitt won all three of its meets last weekend at the Terrapin Duals, topping Kutztown, West Liberty, and host Maryland. That gets the Panthers off to a 3-0 start to the season.
As expected, Pitt had an easy time with those first two schools. The Panthers won every match against West Liberty and Ronnie Garbinsky at 157 pounds was the lone Pitt casualty against Kutztown. In all, Pitt won those to duals by a total score of 87-6. Maryland, however, was a little tougher.
The Panthers and Terrapins split their ten bouts 5-5. Trailing 15-13, Pitt won as heavyweight Ryan Solomon defeated Dawson Peck, 7-5 to give the Panthers a narrow 16-15 victory. Also winning bouts for Pitt against Maryland were LJ Bentley (125 pounds), Cody Wiercioch (165 pounds), TeShan Campbell (174 pounds), and Nick Bonaccorsi (197 pounds). Wiercioch was the only Panther to wrestle in three matches and win all three.
The Panthers are expected to be a bit down from last year, losing several key pieces from last year, including Tyler Wilps, Max Thomusseit, and Anthony Zanetta. In the offseason, there was also the dismissal of a once (excuse the pun) bright spot, Edgar Bright. They weren't ranked in the preseason NWCA poll (though they did receive some votes to effectively check in at No. 33) that was released last week. Because so few ranked programs competed this past weekend, the organization actually took the week off from releasing a poll. That's fine by me, but imagine the outrage if that happened in something like college football.
Pitt has some time off before facing Lehigh in a couple of weeks on November 20th in a road matchup. The team won't be home until December 10th against Edinboro.
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