Rutgers wrestling withdraws from quad since of virus Rider travels to face Lehigh

It was meant to be the afternoon in which the Rutgers University wrestling crew would virtually surely decide up its initial get of the year in a quad fulfill on Saturday at Indiana University.

In its place, the Scarlet Knights were pressured to withdraw thanks to positive coronavirus tests inside its program. As a outcome this leaves Rutgers (-4) with at this time only one more frequent-year match on its timetable in a twin meet on Feb. 19 at Maryland.

Whether that match will even get spot continues to be very significantly up in the air simply because the Massive 10 Convention has a rule that necessitates athletes to not contend for 17 days if they exam good for covid.

As these, at this issue the greatest emphasis for Rutgers is to be prepared for the Big Ten Championships on March 6 at Penn State.

On the as well as side, in spite of the cancellations — a match in opposition to Penn Point out was also known as off for the reason that of corona — Rutgers is in fairly superior form in terms of wrestlers needing at minimum four bouts to get at huge-bids to the nationals. At this issue, 7 Rutgers starters have 4 bouts in the books and the others have 3.

With Rutgers at the moment shut down, this usually means Rider is the only nearby Division I school wrestling this weekend. Next a two-7 days layoff, the Broncs are due to get again in motion in an absent fulfill at Lehigh Sunday afternoon in what has the likely to be a authentic very good a person.

Rider (2-1) will go into this match rated as large as 24th in the nation in 1 rankings, although Lehigh (2-2) is ranked 25th by InterMat.

The groups have a widespread opponent in Binghamton. Rider dropped to Binghamton, 27-20, in its first match of the period when Lehigh defeat Binghamton, 19-16, very last weekend.

Devoid of a question, a spotlight bout could arrive at heavyweight in between two nationally-ranked seniors wrestlers. Rider’s undefeated Ethan Laird is now ranked 14th although Lehigh’s Jordan Wooden is ranked fifth.

Each and every group has a person other wrestler rated in the top 20 by Intermat with Rider’s Jesse Dellavecchia at this time fourth at 157 lbs . and Lehigh’s Brandon Paetzell 10th at 133. Paetzell is a single of two Phillipsburg Higher graduates in the Mountain Hawk lineup.

Lehigh owns a 15-6 file all-time history versus Rider. The groups did not fulfill final year and their previous match was a 26-12 Lehigh victory in the 2015-2016 year.

Prior to using on Rider Sunday, Lehigh will also acquire on Military and North Carolina on Saturday.

TCNJ UPDATE

At lengthy final, The College or university of New Jersey will lastly get on the mat in a match at Messiah on Saturday. This will be adopted by a property match on Wednesday versus Messiah on Senior Night time.

The TCNJ lineup does include three freshmen wrestlers from the Colonial Valley Conference. They are Hightstown’s Alex Stavrou (149) as very well as Allentown’s Nick Golden (165) and Matt Paglia (149).

TCNJ has five regular-year matches scheduled prior to the NCAA Division 3 Mideast Regionals on Feb. 27-28.