App State wrestling hosted the No. 19 West Virginia Mountaineers in their first home duel in the new-look Varsity Gym Friday. Despite strong performances in several matches, App State was defeated 37-8, with West Virginia ultimately proving they were the top Mountaineers on the day.
“It was a really awesome atmosphere tonight, and I’m really thankful for our fans and all of App Nation that showed up,” head coach JohnMark Bentley said. “It was really a great atmosphere to compete in. Obviously, I wish we’d performed a little better, but the venue was awesome.”
The Mountaineers took two of the 10 matches in the duel. With redshirt sophomore 149-pound Kaden Keiser and junior 197-pound Carson Floyd taking their matches.
Keiser faced Blake Boyers, who was making his duel debut for West Virginia, ultimately winning 21-5 by tech fall.
“Kaiden dominated his opponent and really wrestled well on his feet,” Bentley said.
Bentley said Keiser’s match got the momentum to swing back in their direction after several bad matches.
Floyd’s match against Rune Lawrence was more closely contested, ultimately going to overtime before Floyd executed a takedown that decided the match with him winning 4-1.
“Carson comes out and after having match after match where we just underperformed and I thought he did a good job of finishing the match,” Bentley said. “I think that’s the one match that we finished strong tonight.”
The biggest match of the night was a showdown between two top 10 wrestlers in the 165-pound class, App State’s senior No. 8 Will Miller and West Virginia’s No. 3 Peyton Hall, a two-time All-American.
Miller entered the third period of the match with a 3-1 lead and 1:41 in riding time. He extended his lead to 4-1 with an escape, but Hall executed a match-tying takedown with 43 seconds left.
Miller tried to execute another escape to retake the lead, but Hall was able to prevent it and put Miller in a position for back points before ending the match by fall with 11 seconds left.
The 133-pound match was also tightly contested, with App State’s senior Chad Bellis taking an early lead against No. 25 Jett Strickenberger 7-1 after executing a takedown in each of the first two periods. Strickenberger cut the lead to 7-5 with a takedown in the third period and then did it again to tie the match at 8.
The match went to overtime and Bellis was unable to take the win with Strickenberger executing a takedown in sudden victory to win 11-8.
The other matches were largely uncompetitive as West Virginia demonstrated the depth that allowed them to be ranked coming into the week.
In the 141-pound class, App State’s redshirt junior Riley Edwards took on No. 11 Jordan Titus, losing a lopsided match 17-2 by tech fall.
Redshirt freshman 157-pound Jeremiah Price faced Sasha Gavronsky and swiftly lost by fall only 1:06 into the match.
In a matchup against No. 30 Brody Conley, redshirt junior 174-pound Luke Uliano was unable to get any offense going, losing a 4-0 decision.
The 184-pound match was more of the same, with App State’s redshirt freshman Logan Eller losing a 14-8 major decision to Dennis Robin.
Freshman heavyweight Stephan Monchery also lost a major decision, losing 11-1 to West Virginia’s No. 29 Michael Wolfgram.
Finally, redshirt sophomore 125-pound Noah Luna was defeated by Jace Schafer by fall 5:42 into the match.
All of these losses ultimately meant that App State dropped to 0-2 on the year in duels, both of which were against ranked teams.
The Mountaineers will return to action on Dec. 6-7 when they travel to Las Vegas for the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational.
