By Tyler McCord, Staff Writer
This past weekend, Hofstra's wrestling team flew to Las Vegas for arguably the toughest tournament of the regular season, the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational. Hofstra managed an eleventh place finish out of 36 teams, which is a major improvement from the program's twenty-fourth place finish out of 42 teams a year ago.
"I think we had a pretty good team," said Hofstra head coach Tom Shifflet. "Maybe with P.J. [Gillespie] and Ben [Clymer] out there we finish fifth or sixth, but you have to look at the long term [goal] and where we want to be as a team come March."
With six first round byes, the Pride was able to put eight of its nine wrestlers into the second round.
Joining sophomore 125 pounder Steve Bonnano in the second round was senior 133 pounder Lou Ruggirello, junior 141 pounder Vince Varela, redshirt sophomore 149 pounder Justin Accordino and junior 165 pounder P.J. Gillespie.
The first match of the second round saw Bonnano drop to the consolation bracket to the hands of third ranked Logan Stieber from Ohio State, 9-5.
"Even though Steve lost three matches out there and placed, he showed me he was one of the better wrestlers in the country," said Shifflet.
Ruggirello continued his winning streak with a 7-2 decision over eleventh ranked Joseph Stanzione from Cornell.
Varela pulled off an upset over fifth ranked Christopher Diaz, edging the Virginia Tech wrestler with a 3-2 decision.
Wisconsin's eleventh ranked Coulthurst Schmitt advanced over Accordino by a decision of 7-1.
Gillespie punched his ticket to the quarterfinals with a dominant 6-0 win over Ohio State's Jared Kusar.
In the quarterfinals, Varela dropped a 6-1 decision from Cal Poly's Borislav Novachkov. Varela ended up finishing in sixth place.
Ruggirello upset third ranked Filip Novachkov 7-1 and Gillespie saw some early CAA action with a 1-0 decision over Drexel's Joe Boothe. According to Shifflet, Gillespie "tweaked his arm" against Boothe in the victory.
With the finals only one match away, the only team that stood in the way of Ruggirello and Gillespie of the finals was Wisconsin. Ruggirello, ranked sixth in the tournament, took on second ranked Tyler Graff to try and continue his weekend for one more match. Graff was able to hold off Ruggirello and capture a 2-0 decision.
As for Gillespie, he had a little more on his hands. A two-time NCAA All-American and 2010 NCAA Division 1 Champion at 165 lbs, Andrew Howe. A bandaged up Gillespie gave Howe a fight, but was not able to earn a victory as Howe won by a 2-0 decision. This would be the end of Gillespie's tournament.
"I felt that P.J. would still take third place" said Shifflet. "But do you push a kid and put him in a situation where he's not wrestling a hundred percent?"
Ruggirello finished a team-high third place and a banged up Gillespie forfeited his way to a sixth place finish.
"I think we had a lot of good positive results," said a pleased Shifflet. "Some of our guys wrestled a little more consistent and it shows progress." A few other notable finishes were Steve Bonnano and Justin Accordino who both placed eight in Las Vegas.