Mustang News Staff Report
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Freshman Nick Fiegener won two of his three 184-pound meets and continued his impressive rookie campaign in what was an otherwise turbulent Windy City Duals affair for the Cal Poly wrestling team in Evanston, Illinois, on Saturday.
The Mustangs (0-7 in duals) lost all three of their meets at Northwestern’s Welsh-Ryan Arena to No. 18 Northwestern, Eastern Michigan and Princeton. The day’s first meet pitted Cal Poly against a Northwestern (8-1) lineup that features five nationally ranked wrestlers, including two No. 1s in their weight class.
Cal Poly’s first victory came in the 174-pound match when sophomore Mitch Woods earned the decision 7-5 over Wildcats sophomore Ben Sullivan. Fiegener followed the victory with a 6-5 decision of his own over freshman Mitch Silga.
Northwestern senior Mike McMullan — currently the No. 1 heavyweight — then fell to sophomore Nicolas Johnson 3:25 into the match, closing out the meet and sealing the Wildcats win.
In the midday meet, Cal Poly was again limited to just two non-forfeiture victories, this time by Eastern Michigan (5-2), which won 30-7. The Mustangs were unable to get on the board in the dual until sophomore Travis Berridge won 5-4 by way of tiebreaker over Eagles sophomore Austin Geerlings in the 165-pound class.
Two matches later, Cal Poly saw its most dominant performance of the day in Fiegener’s 15-3 major decision over Eagles sophomore Mike Curby.
Cal Poly was unable to salvage a win in its last dual of the day against Princeton (3-1) despite back-to-back decisions to open the match in the 125 and 133 by freshmen Yoshito Funakoshi and Victor Trujillo, respectively. The Mustangs were shut out by the Tigers the rest of the way and lost 35-6.
The team will travel home and get a week off for finals before returning to action Dec. 21 at the Reno Tournament of Champions.
Harry Chang contributed to this report.