It's not common in college wrestling to face the same school in a dual meet for two weeks in a row during the regular season. But that is exactly the situation the Virginia wrestling team (3-5, 0-1 ACC) finds itself in when it butts heads with North Carolina (2-2, 1-0) this evening in Chapel Hill.
The Cavaliers wrestled in the Virginia Duals in Hampton, Va. last Friday where, due to random scheduling, they met North Carolina in a non-conference match in the second round. On the whole it was a rough day for the Cavalier wrestlers, who lost all three of their dual meet matches in the tournament, including a 25-9 defeat to the Tar Heels.
"Obviously we lost, so we're going to have to do something a little different this time around," Virginia coach Lenny Bernstein said. "The thing is two of the losses were overtime losses; one of the losses was by a riding time point. When you look at it from that perspective those matches are easy to flip the other way, and that gives us the win versus the loss."
The Cavaliers got off to a rough start when they lost their first four matches at 125, 133, 141 and 149 pounds, where junior Paul Dunstan fell 2-1 by a riding time point. Freshman Anthony Burke (125) lost, 4-2, in overtime.
Virginia rebounded to win the next three matches at 157, 165 and 174 to bring the score to 15-9, but lost the last three bouts to the Heels, including another overtime loss, this time by sophomore Kyle Narkiewicz at 184.
"There's not really a whole lot you change in a week," said senior captain Will Durkee, who was the only Cavalier who went 3-0 at Virginia Duals and is 15-5 overall. "I definitely think our mindset going in needs to be a little better. We just didn't have a good showing as a team in any of our dual meets in the Virginia Duals."
One area in which the Cavaliers have struggled so far this season is away road meets. In their first dual meet of the season, they fell 32-0 to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg in mid-December. Durkee said some of the younger players let the crowd and momentum affect their wrestling, and they need to take precautions to keep that from happening this weekend in Chapel Hill.
"I think people just need to be able to stay focused through [the crowd and the momentum], whether it's sitting in the locker room until it's time for your match, if that's what you need to do to prepare," he said. "That was a huge problem at Virginia Tech."
The Cavaliers cannot just count on reversing the close matches from last Friday to grab a victory this evening. The squad also has to make sure that the wrestlers who won last Friday against North Carolina -- Durkee (165), Paul Bjorlo (157) and Rocco Caponi (174) -- win again.
"The guys that won, we need to go look [at their opponents], too, because they're going to counter," Bernstein said. "We need to be able to plan ahead, almost like a chess match. You got to be one step ahead to make sure you're not going to be the one getting upset."
The other expected starters for Virginia tonight are Byron Dunlap (133), Aaron Martin or Chet Naylor (141), Scott Smith (197) and Nick Smith (HWT).
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