The NC State Wolfpack wrestling team is coming off an ACC championship season and is in the midst of the best-ever stretch in its near 100-year history after six straight top-20 national finishes.
However, it also enters the 2019-20 campaign with a chip on its collective shoulder.
Star captain and redshirt junior 157-pounder Hayden Hidlay is coming off his lowest national tournament placement yet (fourth) and lost more times at just the NCAA Championships alone last year than he did as a redshirt freshman. However, the two-time All-American enters the year ranked No. 1 nationally by all outlets.
Classmate Nick Reenan — who was ranked higher than Hidlay coming out of high school to headline the country’s No. 1 recruiting class in 2016 — is moving up a weight class, to 197, and still looking for his first All-America honor (top-eight finish at NCAAs). He’s also coming off a torn ACL, suffered last December, but had arguably the best 2018 summer in all of college wrestling, when he won the World Team Trials and the only American who beat him was eventual world champion David Taylor at Final X.
Reenan carried that momentum into last season and had a pair of top-six victories before the injury, but he continued to wrestle afterwards, and NC State mathematically wouldn’t have won the ACC last year without him.
Fellow redshirt junior Tariq Wilson is also moving up in weight, to 141, and coming off a disappointing and injury-filled season after he was the darling of the 2018 NCAA Championships, when he came out of nowhere to place third. He lost in quadruple overtime of what is called the blood round at NCAAs last year, one win shy of his second straight All-America honors.
It doesn’t end there. The Bullard twins — redshirt juniors Thomas (165) and Daniel (174) — were top-50 recruits and are still trying to break through in college on a national level, but both must fend off competition from the roster for the starting spots.
The newcomers to the lineup, headlined by 184-pound redshirt freshman Trent Hidlay and 125-pound classmate Jakob Camacho, will be looking to prove themselves, and according to eighth-year head coach Pat Popolizio are all good enough to contend to place in the top eight nationally to earn All-America honors, particularly the aforementioned rookies.
The result is that this is the year NC State wrestling has been building towards for a long time — and it doesn’t have a single grappler in his senior year of eligibility.
“I know what we’re going to have this year; I know we’re going to be ultra-competitive,” Popolizio said. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to win everything, but I know no matter what goes on, these guys are going to compete at an extremely high level and not be satisfied with anything but perfection.
“It’s fun to watch this group work out because they’re so competitive. Workouts become crazy intense because somebody is trying to win something all the time. We’ve had guys do it in the past, but we’ve never had 20 guys trying to do it like we do now.
“When you mix that with the work ethic and talent, it’s going to be exciting to watch these guys compete.”
Popolizio admits Hayden Hidlay is leading a pack of athletes who can’t be pushed hard enough, but the roster is also full of guys trying to match the same level of success he has achieved — or even exceed it.
“Add that [work ethic] to some disappointment from last year’s results between Tariq and Reenan getting hurt, and those guys have a chip on their shoulders right now,” he said. “They’re kind of pissed off right now, which I think is good energy.”
In addition to the elder Hidlay, who was one win away from an NCAA gold medal as a redshirt freshman, Popolizio contends he has four others “right now that can compete to win a national title” in Reenan, Wilson, Trent Hidlay and Camacho.
“Right now, all five of them, I would expect to finish their career with a title,” he continued. “That doesn’t mean all five are going to be able to do it this year, but if they get hot and get confident, they can find themselves in the national finals and competing for it.
“Then we’ll have five other guys that could be very dangerous if things click for them. The other guys on our team are developing but could be like [2018 NCAA champion Michael Macchiavello] — you can see it in them, but they’ve got to prove it a little bit.”
Though there is competition for every starting spot, there are a few front runners that seem like good bets (as of now, at least) to start at the remaining five weights.
The Bullards should man 165 and 174 again, and both open the year ranked among FloWrestling’s top 21 nationally, with Thomas checking in at No. 10 at 165 and Daniel No. 21 at 174.
Redshirt freshman Jarrett Trombley also cracked Flo’s preseason rankings, listed No. 19 at 133 pounds, but Popolizio called that weight, along with 149 and heavyweight, “wild cards” on his team — each has at least three contending for starting duties.
The Wolfpack is sending six 133-pounders to compete at the season-opening Battle At The Citadel this weekend.
There will be no shortage of starting contenders at 149 or heavyweight either, which is nothing new. The coach expects three different grapplers to have a chance at 149 this year — redshirt sophomore A.J. Leitten, and redshirt freshmen Matt Grippi and Matt Fields — while heavyweight was split between Deonte Wilson and Colin Lawler last year, and the sophomores welcome freshman Owen Trephan to the mix this year.
Popolizio even admitted that while he knows what to expect from his top five, the other five weight classes will decide how good the team can be nationally.
“We’re wrestling our best guys this year, so I’m going to leave it up to these guys to figure it out,” Popolizio explained, noting results in early season open tournaments could help figure out those question marks.
After tying for fourth nationally at the 2018 NCAA Championships, the team took a step back last year and its 17th-place showing was tied for the lowest since it finished 19th in Popolizio’s second year at the helm.
The goal is to get back on the podium, which requires a top-four team showing, and continue working for the top prize.
“The year we finished fourth, we were on the path of where we needed to be,” Popolizio explained. “From there, the goal is to maintain — and that’s the hardest part, to be consistent. It’s just so competitive and there are so many things that are out of our control.
“We just want to keep developing guys, be in the mix to compete for hardware every year and obviously the ultimate goal is to win a team national title. I know the guys are training for and talking about winning the team title, and that’s what is making these guys great. They’re not delusional about it or wasting their time.
“The guys on this team believe they can win a team title and an individual title. That’s never really been talked about outside of a couple of guys. Now, you can hear these guys and they lead it. They talk about why they were recruited here — ‘we were recruited here to win a national title’ — and that’s the reality.”
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