Matches are hardly ever decided before they start. But when the Duke wrestlers hosted the Davidson Wildcats Friday night in Cameron Indoor Stadium, victory was never in doubt.
Although the Blue Devils have wrestle-offs to determine who starts and who does not, the Wildcats have difficulty fielding an entire team. Davidson brought only four wrestlers to Durham this past weekend to compete against a full Blue Devil squad.
Regardless, Duke squashed any doubt as to who the better team was as all four matches contested went in its favor.
"Maybe as a team we weren't real motivated, but the guys that were wrestling sure were," 149-pound senior Luke Palmisano commented.
Palmisano got the ball rolling for the Blue Devils with a head-on-the-outside single against the Wildcats' Grant Doorbos early on in the meet's first match. Palmisano hit two more takedowns without ever being challenged by his opponent, and cruised to an 8-3 victory.
Duke's 157-pound junior Ben Balmages followed suit against Jeff Bender, who was enjoying a five-match winning streak at the time, by hitting a high crotch at the end of the first period for an early 6-2 lead. After letting Bender escape to start the second, Balmages took him down again for his fourth takedown of the match. Bender countered with a takedown late in the third, but Balmages went fairly uncontested en route to a 10-6 victory.
Sophomore Tom Glenn wrestled well in his first collegiate dual meet, using a very solid but un-flashy style to wear the Wildcats' Mo Idlibi down before winning by a 7-3 decision.
"I was definitely motivated to start with," Glenn said of his match. "It was a real close match the whole way, but we're real well-conditioned. We have really hard practices, so I wound up getting few more takedowns."
Junior 165-pounder Mike Mitchell secured his team-leading 20th win of the season with a 9-1 throttling over sophomore Mike O'Hair. Mitchell used a hard double leg-tilt series to set the tone of the match, opening up an early 4-0 lead. Mitchell's furious pace frustrated O'Hair in the first period, as he was called for stalling twice, giving one penalty point to the Blue Devil. After a scoreless second period, Mitchell escaped and hit a single-leg takedown for the major decision. The victory made the team score 13-0 in favor of Duke, who then received six consecutive forfeits to accumulate a 49-0 team victory. The win raised the Blue Devils' record to 5-2 while the Wildcats are still winless in 10 dual meets.
"I was real pleased with our guys tonight," coach Clar Anderson said after the match. "Obviously the team score was never in doubt, but we could have been tempted to take them lightly. I think we did really well tonight."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.