Top-ranked Knights ‘wrestled tired’ in beating Luther

WAVERLY - A wrestling coach is never satisfied.

Even Wartburg's Eric Keller, who hasn't coached anything but a national championship team since becoming co-head coach in 2010 and taking over in 2013.

So after his Knights won their fifth straight NWCA Division III National Duals last weekend, became the No. 1-ranked team in the country and went through a hard week of practice, Keller said they should have been better than last night's 24-9 win over No. 19 Luther at Levick Arena.

'Honestly, I didn't feel good about it,” Keller said. 'I felt like we are a lot better than what we wrestled tonight. I thought we wrestled tired in some of those matches.”

Wartburg won seven of 10 matches, but only notched three bonus points with major decisions from Jake Agnitsch (125), Kaz Onoo (141) and Gerard Roman (197).

After Luther's third-ranked Jayden DeVilbiss kept the Norse alive with a thrilling 13-12 win over No. 9 Devin Peterson at 184, Roman had a workmanlike 9-0 win at 197.

Then reigning Iowa Conference wrestler of the week Ben Nagle picked up his team-leading 19th win of the season.

Nagle let Conner Herman escape to tie the score with just over a minute left in the third, then earned a 5-2 win with a takedown and riding-time point.

'I'm most confident in my conditioning, so I knew that I would be a lot stronger than him in the third period,” Nagle said.