Penn to face top foe on the mats

The 16th-ranked Penn wrestling team heads to EIWA rival Lehigh. When Penn 149-pounder Brett Matter's name is announced tonight at Grace Hall, all the Lehigh students in attendance will erupt into a chorus of boos. All, that is, except for Lehigh freshman Michi Matter, Brett's sister. "She's a Penn fan all the way, probably my biggest supporter," Matter said. "But, to be honest with you, I think [the Lehigh fans] have a genuine dislike for the Matter family." The dislike started with wins by Brett's father, Andrew, over Lehigh wrestlers nearly 30 years ago. It has continued with Brett and his brother Clint, a two-time EIWA champ who graduated from Penn in 1997. While the crowd regularly rides the Matters in matches, Lehigh wrestlers have not beaten a member of the Matter family since 1971. Ryan Bernholz, No. 5 in the nation, will try to end that streak tonight. He will face No. 8 Matter in one of the premier bouts in the clash between No. 16 Penn (6-0-2) and No. 20 Lehigh (7-4) at Grace Hall. Matter, after a rough middle of the season, got back on track last weekend with two impressive victories. "[The midseason slump] affected me in a lot of ways," Matter said. "Things just piled up. But now I feel a lot better about the way I'm wrestling. The inner arrogance I carry around when I wrestle -- it's hard to explain but when I'm on top of my game it's there -- that's back." Lehigh seems to have found its stride as well. "Some losses in the beginning of the season had our guys thinking they weren't any good," Lehigh coach Greg Strobel said. "But we had a real good win against Rider [last] weekend that has really helped our confidence." Lehigh destroyed Rider, then ranked 17th in the nation, 33-11 on Friday. Rider had beaten Cornell earlier in the season, a team Penn wrestled to a draw two weeks ago. "The transitive property doesn't really work in sports and it definitely doesn't work in wrestling," Penn coach Roger Reina said. "[Rider] had some freshmen that didn't handle the pressure well at Lehigh. We've got a lot more experienced crew than Rider has. I think we match up much better with Lehigh than Rider did." Part of the pressure Rider had to deal with included the crowd of more than 2,000 at Grace Hall. Strobel compares the atmosphere of the 2,600-seat arena to that of the Palestra during a basketball game. Lehigh has used its home crowd to its advantage, compiling a 15-2 home record over the last three years. The Quakers are not strangers to large crowds, having competed in front of 8,000 last year against NCAA champion Iowa, but they have not beaten Lehigh on the road since 1942. Granted, the two have met only three times in the last 42 years, but the only match at Grace Hall, in 1997, was a Lehigh victory. Still, Penn is not overly concerned. "We've had maybe one guy [who] hasn't wrestled against that crowd," Reina said. "We've addressed that in practice this week. Our team is going to be well-prepared." Individually, the three biggest matches will be in the middleweights. Besides Matter-Bernholz, fans can look forward to tight matches at 165 and 157 pounds. Penn will send out No. 9 Rick Springman against Lehigh's Travis Doto, No. 15, in the 165-lb. bout. Both wrestlers have been hyped as the most exciting on their teams. Springman, who defeated Doto 6-5 in this meet last year, has been on a roll lately. He has won 8-of-9 matches, all by at least a major decision. His only loss was to No. 2 Rangi Smart, and that came by just one point. At 157 pounds, No. 11 Yoshi Nakamura will square off with No. 7 Chris Ayres of Lehigh. Nakamura pinned similarly named Brown wrestler Chris Ayers last Friday, but this match will not be as easy for the Penn sophomore. Nakamura and Ayres have split their two matches, but Matter is 4-0 lifetime against last year's EIWA champion. "Chris and I have battled a bunch of times," said Matter, who faced Ayres in the old 142-lb. weight class. "I've come out on top but he's a tough wrestler. I think that Yoshi's got the ability of pulling out a victory. [Ayres] wrestles into a lot of Yoshi's strengths." Last weekend Reina stressed a more aggressive gameplan, a strategy that seemed to work in victories over Brown and Harvard. Penn will try to focus on its offense even more against Lehigh tonight. "We want to be more aggressive than we were against Cornell," Springman said of the tie against the Big Red two weeks ago. "We kinda froze under the pressure there." The near-capacity crowd will be pulling for an upset at Grace Hall, but the Quakers can count on the support of at least one renegade Mountain Hawk. Just like in any other match, Michi Matter will be sitting among the Red and Blue, cheering for her brother.