Wrestling | Test results are in, and they're far from pretty

The Penn wrestling team had hoped for success in the desert, but it came home with a valuable lesson instead of hardware.

The No. 22 Quakers placed two wrestlers at the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational en route to a 14th-place finish after taking third at the event last year. Sophomore 125-pounder Rollie Peterkin provided a lone bright spot for the Red and Blue, taking home third place in his weightclass.

But against a field riddled with top-ranked opponents, Penn struggled to keep up. The Quakers finished behind nine other ranked teams, including No. 10 Michigan and No. 7 Missouri, who finished first and second, respectively.

"There's no question that we were able to measure ourselves," coach Zeke Jones said. "The feelings are mixed in that I think we showed signs of being able to compete with the very best, but we made quite a few mistakes in areas that we have to improve on."

"It's why we go to a tournament like this."

Chief among those areas is the wrestlers' work on the bottom. The Quakers lost several key matches on the weekend after their opponents were able to control the tempo from the top, accumulating riding time and not conceding escape points.

Junior Cesar Grajales, seeded 12th, fell to eventual tournament champion Darrion Caldwell in the third round of the 149-pound bracket. In that match, the fifth-seeded wrestler from N.C. State rode Grajales for an entire period, turning a close match into a 4-1 decision.

Others had trouble on bottom as well, with Zack Shanaman losing a match in which he failed to escape for a period and Peterkin falling in the semifinals to Stanford's Tanner Gardner, another eventual champion.

"It's such a strategic advantage for someone that can ride someone for an entire period," Jones said. "I would say, just guessing, that probably 70 percent of the matches we lost, where we did lose was failure to get off the bottom."

The loss to Stanford's Gardner was the only blemish on a memorable weekend for Peterkin.

In the consolation third-place bout, he bested third-seed Dave Tomasette from Hofstra for the second time in two days to cement his impressive finish.

"He's a tough wrestler," Peterkin said of his twice-victim. "It was just a dogfight both times."

Elsewhere, Lior Zamir wrestled to an eighth-place finish at 184 pounds, while Shanaman and freshman Scott Giffin made it to Saturday's competition but were unable to place in the top 8.

"The commitment to improvement will be our No. 1 goal," Jones said. "We just can't wait till March to get it done - it's got to happen now."

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