Colorado Mesa University men’s wrestling battled back from an early deficit to defeat Western 24-21 in the Pipher vs Pipher matchup.
“There was a few things that we worked on going into the Western dual. We just worked on that they do some hybrids and we just had to be careful of that.” Head Coach Chuck Pipher said.
The Mavericks were back at Brownson arena Thursday night to faceoff in an Rocky Mountain Athletic dual against Western State University. Chuck Pipher’s son, Charlie is the coach at Western. Last year, Charlie beat CMU to win the RMAC Championship.
“We just want to keep improving each week. We have a relatively young team so we are building everyday working hard doing some good things. It is good to have a young team, building for the future.” Chuck Pipher said.
The Mavericks saw themselves down after the first three matches and had to find momentum from somewhere to get themselves to where they wanted to be. They found that momentum in the 149-pound weight class in Daniel Van Hoose and then in the 157-pound weight class with Payton Tawater.
“ It would have been important to come out string but we just lost those first three and after that it was catch up time. We just had to keep battling.” Pipher said.
Van Hoose found the first win of the night for the Mavericks against Giovanni Cassioppi with a 4-2 decision. Tawater found himself with a decision of his own of 13-0 and earning the Mavericks four more points towards the team’s total score.
Hayden Harris and Seth Latham found themselves with wins against their opponents as well. The Mavericks had 19 points overall when junior Donnie Negus stepped onto the mat for the CMU
Negus gave the Mavericks just what they needed to complete the win against Western with getting a 21-5 tech fall and giving the team those five extra points to close out the night.
“It was huge that sealed this for us. I mean Donnie is a workhorse and you can see it when he steps on the mat you could tell the kid was way bigger than he was and he got in there and kept fighting and battling it out and he got through it.” Pipher said.
The Mavericks are now 2-0 in duels on the season and continue to find wins when they go to the Reno Tournament of Champions Dec.15.
