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Rutgers Wrestling: BOOM!

They won't all be that easy, but, man was that impressive.

By rvc73
Roy DeBoer - used with permission

Rutgers improved to 11-2, 2-1 in the Big Ten, with a solid 34-0 victory over Michigan State. The Knights won all ten bouts en route to the win. MSU fell to 0-7, 0-2 B1G.

They don't come very often, but the blanking was the first Big Ten shutout for the Knights.T

Tyler Dippery had the first bonus points of the match with a 18-0 Tech at 149. Anthony Pafumi earned a major at 184 and Billy Smith took a 11-1 major at heavyweight.

Sean McCabe opened things with a  2-1 win at 125.   He almost gave up 2 at the end but got the Knights off to a great start on a great night.

At 133, Anthony Giraldo was dominant on top in a 4-0 decision.  He had a good recovery in the second period coming off a scramble and fought off an almost self pin in the third.

The match where everyone expected bonus points, and a win, was with No. 4. Anthony Ashnault at 141.  The match, though, was closer than most expected with Ashnault winning 4-3 on riding time.  An early takedown put AA up and after two periods with 2:33 of riding time. In the third, the Spartans' Javier Gasca got in deep on an ankle, Ashnault countered.  Gasca, a bit of a brawler, created a sloppy match at the end, with Gasca taking down Ashnault at the buzzer, but the win came off the dominating riding time.

Probably the most impressive win of the night was at 149, where Tyson Dippery recorded a 18-0 tech fall.  The first points, a takedown, came just 18 seconds into the match.  Dippery led 10-0 with 2:42 of riding time at the end of one.

Richie Lewis took an 8-3 decision at 157 to end the first half of the match, with the Knights leading 17-0. After intermission, Anthony Perrotti wrestled an aggressive match in taking a 5-1 decision.  Like Dippery, Perrotti went after his opponent and recorded a takedown in the first nine seconds, ending the match with over three minutes of riding time.

After a scoreless first period at 174, Phil Bakuckas, recorded a two-point nearfall on the edge of the circle off the opening scramble of the second. He just missed a cradle for back points in the last 30 seconds, missing a major and settling for a 8-2 victory.

At 184 Anthony Pafumi took a 15-3 major decision.  And at 197, Hayden Hrymack earned his 50th career win with a gutsy 4-2 win over Joseph Cooper. Hrymack had great counters off shots, including fighting a deep high crotch to a whizzer for no score

Billy Smith did what Billy Smith does.  Aggressive throughout the match, Smith built up points to score the third major of the night, 11-1.

Head coach Scott Goodale was pleased with the performance.


"I think we can wrestle with anybody in the conference," Goodale said. "We feel good about the schedule that's out in front of us, but we feel good about what we did out of conference too. We feel like we can win all of them from here on out, but at the same time we have to wrestle really, really good to do that."

A crowd of 3,360 watched the Knights go 2-0 in Big Ten matches at the RAC.

Next up:

1/17/16 at Minnesota * Minneapolis, Minn. 2:00 p.m. ET