“It hurts”: UNI has rough Friday after fast start at NCAA wrestling

DETROIT — It is a similar story that plays out year after year at the NCAA Division I wrestling championships.

When it comes to getting your hand raised, or walking off the mat dejected, the margin of error is slim.

Friday, the Northern Iowa wrestling team learned how little that margin is.

Coming off a strong opening day that saw the Panthers in sixth in the team standings and with six wrestlers fighting for the chance to become All-Americans, UNI was hurting after Friday’s first session.

Just one Panther remains alive, Parker Keckeisen, and he’s hurting, too.

Keckeisen lost for just the second time in this season, 6-5, in the 184-pound quarterfinals to Cal Poly’s Bernie Truax. Four other UNI wrestlers lost in the match before the All-American round.

“It is a tough-assed tournament,” UNI head coach Doug Schwab said. “Margins are small. They are always small. You’ve got to figure out how to put them in your favor more, more and more.

“The thing is … you see these hallways, and I don’t think there is a coach walking around here that feels good. That tells you how brutal this sport is, but how it also forges you, grows you as a person. Even deep down if it tears your heart out, we still love it.”

Friday’s early session started off well for the Panthers.

Brody Teske beat Penn State All-American Drew Hildebrandt, 8-4, as UNI won four of five consolation second-round matches. Colin Relabuto beat Duke’s Josh Finesilver at 149, Austin Yant topped North Dakota State’s Luke Weber, 3-2, at 165, and Lance Runyon rolled passed Nick Incontera of Penn at 174, 8-2.

Then things turned for the worse.

Keckeisen, third at 184 last year, made two semi-strategic errors against Truax, an All-American at 174 in 2021, who used his length and flexibility to slow down Keckeisen.

Truax caught Keckeisen reaching on a long takedown attempt off the opening whistle and took an early 2-0 lead. Keckeisen battled back, scored his own takedown and the match was tied 3-all after one period. In the second, once again Keckeisen reached a bit too far and Truax countered to score.

“He took enough risks,” Schwab said. “Parker got to his legs, but he split every time. Usually, Parker is able to get tight, change direction and finish. There were probably four or five times he (Truax) split, and his other foot is almost to the other darn mat. That is a hard thing to pull back.”

In the third, Keckeisen cut Truax to give the Cal Poly wrestler a 6-5 lead, then with just under a minute left in the match, Keckeisen got to a Traux leg and reached and grabbed the opposite ankle with a toe in bounds. The two remained that way for 10 or 15 seconds until Truax was able to pull Keckeisen out with under 35 to go.

Schwab chose not to challenge the no-call.

“He (the official) saw it clearly, and he held it there for 15, 20 seconds,” Schwab said. “I don’t think he was going to go back and reverse that call. I thought he (Keckeisen) had it long enough, but I trusted Parker to go get a leg, finish. He has done that his whole career.

“Maybe if it went upstairs, they would have, but at that point, it didn’t seem like he (the official) was going to change (his call).”

After Keckeisen’s loss, one by one, UNI’s remaining consolation wrestlers went down.

Teske lost to returning All-American Patrick McKee of Minnesota, 7-0. Realbuto lost to another returning All-American, Jonathan Millner of Appalachian State, 4-0. Yant was beat by Harvard’s Philip Conigliaro, 7-2, and Runyon was pinned by eighth-seed Michael O’Malley of Drexel.

“Man, we are always going to be bigger than our results,” Schwab said. “But this is fresh, and it hurts right now. It is painful. This is just a tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough tournament, and there is no way around it. You can be prepared in every possible way and even then, it doesn’t guarantee you anything as we saw this morning.

“It hurts. It frickin’ hurts.”

UNI will return all eight of its qualifiers next season. All eight won at least one match this weekend, and five of them won two.