No. 18 Rutgers takes out Maryland 25-12, Finishes 5-4 in Big Ten

The Scarlet Knights will head into the Big Ten Tournament with a tuneup win over Maryland to close out the dual season at 12-6 (5-4).

Rutgers rolled over their Big Ten counterpart with some solid victories. Here are some observations:

Ashnault Remains Undefeated, Suriano Wins Quick

Anthony Ashnault now is all alone at 2nd all time in wins in program history with 114. He easily managed Alfred Bannister who is a tricky and funky wrestler with his neutral attacks and defense. With a No. 1 ranking in the country, Ashnault will be one of the easier wrestlers to seed at the Big Ten Tournament (#1).

Suriano meanwhile pinned Orion Anderson in just over a minute. A nice tuneup win for the junior as he will be entering a stacked weight class in the conference and the country when NCAA’s arrive in Pittsburgh next month.

Grello and Gravina earn nice wins

Joe Grello kept his winning streak going as he topped Joshua Ugalde, a pesky wrestler, in the second tiebreaker period. That’ll help Grello’s seeding come tournament time.

Nick Gravina meanwhile did in fact wrestle and got a much needed win which will help his Big Ten criteria. Nice to see the “stone cold Italian” put up bonus points.

Glasgow wrestled, but dropped a tight one

It seems like a combination of freshman growing pains and injuries with Stephan Glasgow this season. He looked really sharp early this year before hurting his knee. Since then, he’s lost some tight bouts that should have been wins at full strength. He’s going to have to battle through the pain in the gauntlet that is the 165 pound bracket at Big Tens. However, the weight class should allocate a lot of spots in the Big Ten, so there’s a shot Glasgow could sneak into Pittsburgh.

Box Score:

125: Brandon Cray (UMD) over Shane Metzler (RUTG) (Dec 4-3)

133: No. 4 Nick Suriano (RUTG) over Orion Anderson (UMD) (Fall: 1:10)

141: Peter Lipari (RUTG) over Danny Bertoni (UMD) (Dec 12-6)

149: No. 1 Anthony Ashnault (RUTG) over Alfred Bannisiter (UMD) (MD 11-3)

157: No. 16 John Van Brill (RUTG) over Adam Whitesell (UMD) (TF 20-2)

165: Phil Spadafora (UMD) over Stephan Glasgow (RUTG) (Dec 6-4)

174: Joseph Grello (RUTG) over Josh Ugalde (UMD) (TB-2 3-2)

184: Nicholas Gravina (RUTG) over Kyle Jasenski (UMD) (MD 8-0)

197: Niko Cappello (UMD) over Max Wright (RUTG) (Dec 4-2)

285: No. 9 Youssif Hemida (UMD) over Christian Colucci (RUTG) (Dec 8-2)

What’s Next?

Big Tens! The Scarlet Knights will head out to Minneapolis on March 9th and 10th to wrestle a grind of a tournament. On paper, it appears Rutgers can qualify around seven or eight wrestlers at best for NCAA’s. If everything breaks right, perhaps even nine will make the trip. We’ll have more coverage next week when the allocations are released.