Wrestlers lose close bouts at All-Star meet

Penn's Bandele Adeniyi-Bada and Rick Springman lost by the closest of margins at the NWCA All-Star Classic. Penn wrestling tri-captains Bandele Adeniyi-Bada and Rick Springman took part in the National Wrestling Coaches Association All-Star Wrestling Classic on Monday night in East Lansing, Mich., where they competed in front of a crowd of roughly 5,000 hardcore, knowledgeable grappling fanatics and a contingent of some of the finest athletes from the nation's best programs. But heavyweight Adeniyi-Bada and 174-pounder Springman were not content to just take in the scenery. No. 6 Adeniyi-Bada fought back against undefeated No. 1 Brock Lesnar of Minnesota to tie his match, 4-4, with just three seconds left in the bout. Lesnar's 2:22 of riding time was good enough for a riding point to be assessed after the buzzer that gave the victory to the Gophers' scale-tipper. No. 2 Springman suffered a similarly heartbreaking fate at Michigan State's Jenison Wrestling Arena. He took his match with No. 3 Josh Koscheck of Edinboro to overtime, but suffered a takedown with 53 seconds left in OT to lose 3-1. Although he came up just short in this night of matches between two of the country's top wrestlers in each weight class, Adeniyi-Bada marvelled at the intense atmosphere in East Lansing. "One of the first things I noticed was how we were all treated almost like professional athletes," he said. "I remember that I was stretching at one point, and I looked up and saw people just following every move I made. They were all real hardcore wrestling fans." Lesnar, Adeniyi-Bada's imposing 6' 5" 270-pound opponent, is considered the dominant heavyweight in the land. With his imposing frame, he has mowed through competitors and, according to Penn's heavyweight, Lesnar is not the friendliest of foes. "Last year at Nationals, after we had all made it, and we were all All-Americans, all the heavyweights just were sitting around and talking to each other," Adeniyi-Bada said of a tournament where he was seventh and Lesnar was second. "Brock was the only guy not to talk." Lesnar was bestial out of the gate. He took down Adeniyi-Bada to make it 2-0 in 13 seconds. Adeniyi-Bada rebounded, reversing Lesnar less than 30 seconds later to knot the score at two. Lesnar then used every bit of his girth to ride Adeniyi-Bada for the entirety of the second period, putting him up, 3-2. An escape at the start of the third made it 4-2 Lesnar. "I could tell that he started to get tired," Adeniyi-Bada said. "I got in on him three times before the takedown." The takedown came with just three seconds left on the clock and brought the grappling-savvy crowd to a fevered pitch. After "shucking" Lesnar's arm, Adeniyi-Bada went after his legs and got him off his feet. The clock ran out with the score tied at four. Lesnar's riding advantage secured the 5-4 win. Springman's bout against Koscheck, the only one that went into overtime the whole night, was scoreless through the first period. An escape by the Edinboro wrestler in the second and a Springman escape in the third made for a 1-1 match going into OT. The extra session was a stalemate until Koscheck notched a takedown with less than a minute to go. "Intensity in overtime will win the match," a triumphant Koscheck told the media after his win. Intensity was the word of the night.