The total package

IOWA CITY - The question was simple, the answer even more so.

Iowa red-shirt freshman Brandon Sorensen was asked this week how he could top beating the top-ranked defending NCAA wrestling champion, a feat he accomplished last week against Northwestern's Jason Tsirtsis?

'You keep moving forward and finish on top, that's how you do it,” said Sorensen, a four-time state high school champ at Denver-Tripoli.

To say Sorensen has been on a tear recently would be an understatement. Since finishing third at the Midlands Championships, he has won seven matches in a row, including against NCAA runner-up Josh Kindig of Oklahoma State, who was ranked second at the time, and Tsirtsis. He also beat Ohio State's Hunter Stieber, who was ranked fifth at the time.

Sorensen, 24-2 and ranked second in the nation at 149 pounds, was named Big Ten Wrestler of the Week twice this month.

'They mean something,” he said of the honors and victories, 'but the thing I'm after right now is the national title. That's really what I want.”

That goal may have been outlandish at the start of this season, but not any more.

'He's doing a good job and he has to continue to do a good job and believe in the things that he does well even more,” Iowa Coach Tom Brands said. 'We can take these guys down, we can take them down in the first period, we can score multiple takedowns.

'He's got some really good tools where he can score a lot of points from a lot of different positions. He's pretty much the total package.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8696; jr.ogden@thegazette.com