In their second tournament of the season, the Blue Devil veterans looked strong, and a few newcomers showed some promise. Duke’s lower-weights stood out at the UNC-Pembroke Open this weekend, winning three of the four lowest weight classes.
Freshman Wesley Kuser won in the 133-pound weight class, sophomore Antwone Floyd won by pin at 149 and junior Mark Thompson—who had not wrestled for two years before this season—pinned his opponent in 47 seconds to win at 197.
“Kuser did a marvelous job in there, winning some tough matches,” head coach Clar Anderson said. “Antwone pinned a very tough kid in the finals. We just had some very good performances.”
Returning ACC Champion Christian Smith also won 5-4 in the finals to take the 125-pound weight class.
“I knew if I wrestled my best that I could dominate, and that’s what I was trying to do,” Smith said. “I just wanted to go out there and wrestle and I did that.”
Duke also got second-place finishes from Daniel Shvartsman at 141 pounds and Steve Smith at 165. Shvartsman lost 5-3 in the finals to Willie Hinton from UNC-Pembroke, and Smith did not even get to wrestle his finals match because an injured knee forced him to forfeit. Scott Doerr, Dan Fox and Konrad Dudziak each finished third in the 174, 184 and 195-pound weight classes, respectively.
Because the tournament did not affect ACC standings, the Blue Devils went into the tournament hoping to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Duke’s depth throughout the weight classes was a reason for optimism, but there are still areas of concern.
“Our conditioning is pretty good right now, but there are a lot of technical things we can work on,” Smith said. “That kind of thing just comes from experience, from wrestling more throughout the season.”
Anderson echoed Smith’s sentiments about technical improvement but took more positive thoughts from the weekend.
“We won a lot of close matches, which is a great sign of mental toughness,” Anderson said. “It takes a lot to step up and pull those matches out.”
Duke follows up with a tournament at the University of Pennsylvania next week. Among the teams present will be Hofstra, Brown and Rutgers, all strong teams that should give the Blue Devils experience against tough competition.
“There will be four or five teams there that are ranked higher than us,” Anderson said. “It will be a great test to see where we stand nationally.”
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