Bo Bassett opens NCAA season Friday vs No. 1 Luke Stanich
Days after taking 65kg gold in Astana, the Virginia Tech freshman gets a top-ranked opponent in his first college match.
Bo Bassett will make his NCAA debut this Friday, November 6, at Lehigh against No. 1 Luke Stanich, per Pat Mineo of The Wrestling Room. Mineo called it a "Short turnaround time for World Champ Bo Bassett," which is the whole story in six words. Bassett is going from a Senior World final to the top-ranked wrestler in his college weight inside of a week.
Short turnaround time for World Champ Bo Bassett
The Astana run is earlier business, and it was not a quiet one. Bassett beat Arman Tevanyan 9-1 in the 65kg final to win World gold, a day after digging out of a 14-13 comeback win over Magomedov in the semifinal. Senior men's freestyle gold, then a folkstyle opener against the No. 1 guy.
Why Stanich matters
Stanich is ranked No. 1, and he is doing it at home at Lehigh. There is no easing in here, no exhibition, no mid-major tune up before the ranked work starts. For a freshman who has spent his fall on a freestyle mat in Kazakhstan, the first college match of his career is the hardest one available.
For Virginia Tech, the timing is the interesting part. The Hokies get their headline newcomer on the mat in the first week of the season rather than holding him back, and they get the ranking answer at the lightweight immediately instead of waiting until January. A win says the World title translates to folkstyle scoring right away. A loss says nothing more than that Stanich is No. 1 for a reason and Bassett just wrestled a World Championships.
Our take: the result matters less than the fact that Bassett is wrestling at all this early. Plenty of wrestlers in his position would have taken November off, and the schedule here says Virginia Tech wants the matches on the board.
Mineo is the only one reporting the matchup so far, and nothing in his post addresses how Bassett is feeling physically after Astana or whether the Hokies considered holding him out. Nobody has said why the turnaround is this short.
What to watch
Friday, November 6, at Lehigh. Whether Bassett's freestyle scoring holds up against the No. 1 ranked folkstyle wrestler in his weight in his first college match.
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