By William Bowman
LEWISBURG -- What if Notre Dame came and played at Christy Mathewson-Memorial Stadium on a Saturday afternoon? How about Roy Williams bringing the North Carolina men into Sojka Pavilion to take on Bucknell?
Would you go? Sure you would, because it would be a chance to see greatness.
Local sports fans will get that rare chance Friday afternoon when one of the top programs in NCAA history, the Iowa wrestling team, visits Bucknell to take on the Bison and Rutgers in a tri-meet at Sojka Pavilion.
"This is pretty significant, getting a team like Iowa in here," Bucknell coach Dan Wirnsberger said when the schedule was announced earlier in the fall. "It means a lot to us. It says a lot about our program and how far we've come."
In the first ever wrestling match in the Pavilion, the Bison entertain perhaps the best college athletic program over the past three decades. The Hawkeyes' numbers really speak for themselves.
The NCAA title Iowa won a year ago was its 22nd crown in the last 35 years. Since 1974, the Hawkeyes have had 227 All-Americans, 63 individual national champions and 111 wrestlers reach the NCAA finals. Ten Iowa wrestlers have been named Outstanding Wrestler at the NCAA championships.
Historically speaking, no one is even close.
The Hawkeyes look to be right on track to add to that history.
Iowa, ranked No. 1 in the nation again this year, brings a talented and deep lineup into Friday's matches with the Bison and Scarlett Knights. Eight of Iowa's 10 projected starters are ranked nationally and seven of those are ranked in the top 10. Bucknell has four ranked wrestlers, led by the sixth-ranked Andy Rendos, a returning All-American. The Hawkeyes have five returning All-Americans in the lineup, led by 2008 NCAA champion Brent Metcalf, a '09 runner-up, who is ranked first at 149 pounds.
Iowa enters Friday's action riding a school-record 43 dual-meet win streak. It is 5-0 this year coming off a dominant showing in the Iowa City Duals where it won 49 of 50 individual bouts thanks to 25 falls and nine technical falls. Perhaps most impressive, the Hawkeyes recorded 139 takedowns in the five duals and were taken down just once.
The two teams met a year ago in Iowa City, a 40-3 victory for the Hawkeyes at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. But it was that trip that Wirnsberger said laid the foundation for what turned out to be a stellar season, one that ended with Rendos earning All-American honors and a record six Bison qualifying for nationals.
Wirnsberger took the Bison out a few days early so they could train in Iowa City, get a first-hand look at how the program worked from the inside. What Wirnsberger realized was that a lot of the things Iowa coach Tom Brands, himself a former three-time NCAA champ for the Hawkeyes, was doing were the same things he was doing with his squad.
"Going out there was a huge step for us," Wirnsberger said. "We purposely went out two days in advance to get around the best program in the country. We realized the things they were doing were not much different from what we were doing. The result was not great, but when we got back from that trip, I told the guys we could go one way or another. We wrestled extremely well after that trip."
Bucknell and Iowa will meet at 4 p.m., followed immediately by Iowa and Rutgers with Bucknell and Rutgers finishing it off.
