GoPSUSports is streaming today's presser live AT THIS LINK
I'll also be running paraphrased comments here in this thread as it goes along. Starts now
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TRANSCRIPT - CAEL SANDERSON (March 13, 2017)
On Suriano/health...
He's down in the room right now, wrestling. So he's progressing along. It's looking good. So we're going to - I don't know what else you want to hear. He's in. He's in.
Everyone's healthy. I mean, anytime you come out of a Big Ten tournament, you're going to have some nicks and bruises but nothing - we're healthy and happy and excited. It's national tournament week. It's a good time to be alive right now.
Motivation from Big Tens...
I don't think so. I think the Big Ten tournament is different than the national tournament, which is different from the dual meets. We want to be at our best at every event. I don't think we wrestled terribly at the Big Ten. We could've wrestled better at a couple weights. Ohio State wrestled great. But, yeah, we want to win the national championship, right? That's the goal. That's the individual goal and that's the team goal, and that's the big picture. Not to take anything away from the Big Ten. We want to win the Big Ten as well. I don't think think it really changes much. Our guys know you get to pick and choose how you're going to compete, how you're going to think, how you're going to act. You can use that to your advantage and go out there and be at at your best or you can allow yourself to be distracted for whatever reason by whatever thing. I think that's one of the great things about sports, a great thing about an individual sport also. It's up to you. If you want to be the national champion, well you have to go win the national tournament, right? You do that by wining one match at a time, scoring one point at a time and keeping things simple and just being yourself. So I'm excited to see how our guys respond and react and how they choose to compete this week. I'm excited just like everybody else is.
Fostering attitude...
It's being consistent as a staff, I think. I think everything we do and say and what we tell them what we expect or what we want to see out of them, they have to see the same qualities out of us. I think it's just consistency. I think it's just focusing more on principles. As a coach, I try to focus more on principles - work ethic and gratitude and those things we talk about throughout the year. If you focus on principles, you have a better chance at being successful. That's where consistency comes from is principles. I'd say as as a staff we focus more on principles and have our kids focus more on principles.
Preparation...
We know the individual matches a week out so were preparing for those and trying to get individuals ready. Every kid has a different lifetime experience and they view things different so you have to work with them as individuals mentally in preparation. We're consistent. We have detailed records of everything that we've done every year and what works, what doesn't work, why did this not work. Sometimes you don't know. Sometimes you just have a great day; sometimes you just have a bad day. That's life. We're sticking to our guns and not changing anything and not panicking. Yeah, we didn't win the Big Ten, but we didn't come back and panic. Just got beat. For the most part our guys wrestled well. But this is the team. If the team wants to win, it's real simple, we just have to go score more points than the next team. There's really no secret to it.
On Gulibon...
Jimmy, we'll find out on Thursday, right? He's an individual and he's a tough kid. He works hard. He's been very consistent in his training from day one, from the first day he stepped on campus. He has the ability to wrestle well. He can go with anybody in the country. He has to make that decision and he has to be willing to do that. I think he's in good spirits now. I don't think he really low or down on himself after the Big Ten. I think he was frustrated because he was wrestling great. Obviously he did Not have a great tournament. The effort wasn't great, but he's bounced back. That's one of the things he's learned is to be more resilient. That's what we've seen when he's at his best. Because earlier in his career if he were to give up a takedown early that would be it. That was it. He went through his high career giving up a couple takedowns in four years and probably less than that in his youth. But you see him now he gives up takedowns all the time and he battles back and he keeps moving forward. Big Ten was an exception. We're just looking for his best effort and I think we'll get that. I'm optimistic and I'm hopeful. I think he'll wrestle well. He has the kid he lost to from Michigan State first round. Kid is tricky. He knows how to wrestle Jimmy. He's beaten Jimmy twice. He counters a lot of JImmy's shots. Really good with his re-shots, good scrambler, hard to finish on, but Jimmy can win that match and if he can start winning and get on a roll, he can really do a lot of damage in helping our team be successful.
Overall team capability...
Dual meet-wise, this is the best team we've had, right? We won at least seven matches in every dual and a lot of those big dual were on the road which makes it even more of a challenge. We've had some challenge with injuries this year. That's where we'll find out how strong of a program we are. Can we get the job done despite the setbacks? We're certainly going full-speed ahead and continue in gratitude. We are grateful for the opprotunity and the health and the strength of our guys and what they have. This has been a great team and we want to finish with a great effort. Great moments come from great opportunities and I think this is a great opportunity and we're looking forward to it.
David Taylor...
I think David is just feeling comfortable at his weight class now. He was a little large probably for 74kg when he made that jump up, getting his body to make that comfortable to feel comfortable with his strength and conditioning and timing. Sometimes it happens quicker than other times. It's taken him a little while. Now he's confident and he's big and strong and his timing and his conditioning. When he won the World Cup, conditioning was a large factor in some of those big matches, right? Anyone watching David right now they know that they'll have to deal with a guy who is going to wrestle every second and is going to scramble hard. A lot of times in freestyle wrestling you get in a big scramble guys aren't the same after that. Where David, we do that everyday. That's just part of how he trains. He's doing well. He's very confident. It's fun for me now that he's larger that I can wrestle with him more. I enjoy that and he enjoys it. My job is to get him ready to win a world championship. That was his goal coming in as a true freshman however many years ago it was. He said he wanted to be an Olympic champion, and it gives me a little bit more of an advantage. He's always wrestled with Cunningham and that's one of the reasons why David is good. He seeks out great training partners every day. But he's looking good. I'm excited for him.
...
It's just different because I can wrestle a little closer to 100 percent than if he's 40-30 pounds (lighter) …. We can battle more and I feel like that's one of the things that I need to help him prepare for because e's a guy who if you look at his college record, he didn't have a lot of good matches. He didn't have very many 1-, 2- 3- even 4- or 5-point matches. When you have a kid like that when they get into closer matches they need to be prepared for that, mentally and physically, so that's my job right now is to get him ready to win those close matches.
NCAA Seeds…
I think our guys got the serves they deserved. Nevills, I didn't understand that but outside of Nevills' weight class, I think our guys got the seeds earned throughout the year. You've go to make the regular season count and that's one why you do it is by seeding the tournament correctly. So I think we're in decent shape. We've been in worse shape with matchups. Regardless it's one match at a time. Thats what what it takes to be successful. We don't focus too much on our draws, but we do want to be aware and prepared obviously. Not over-prepared, but ready to go.
Nine-man contingent…
The team has to fight for every point. We have guys who can score bonus points. They just have to be looking for it. We have guys who have to win big matches. That's what it comes down to it, always has. Bonus points are huge, but big wins in the quarters and semifinals are bigger. As a team we've been in about every position. We've been the underdog, expected to win, even. … We've been in all positions and your mentality doesn't change. It's just be the best you can and enjoy it and make sure that enthusiasm as to be front and center in the way you compete. You're not going to do much good without enthusiasm as a team or an individual. If we want to win, we have to go win.
Mark Hall...
Mark is looking great. He really wrestled great in the Big Ten tournament. Third period he got real conservative and kind of shut down, but he knows better than that. He's a gamer and this is the big game. Everything's been preparation up until this point. His goal is to win the nationals and to win as a freshman. He won't be the first if he wins or the last. Freshmen win a lot and they're going to win more and more as we move forward in our sport. He's phenomenal in what he's doing. He's a guy who gets to pick and choose whether he wins or not. I mean, he's that good. He's excited and I'm excited for him. He's had plenty of time to prepare and a lot of times the Big ten tournament is the best preparation for the nationals. if you train correctly and have the right mindset. That's great preparation for what we're heading into now.
...
I'm not going to put that on Mark. Every single individual has a lot of potential to help our team at the national tournament. Take anyone of our kids out of the equation and it completely changes the opprotunity to be national champions. Mark is a freshman and we pulled him late so a lot of people look at him, but we have the same thing with Nick Nevills and Matt McCutcheon. It's his third time going to the national tournament. Bo Nickal, right? These guys, Nolf, Zain - if our team and individuals don't wrestle and do what they're capable of doing we're not going to win the national tournament. You just don't have a lot of room for error. That's what makes it fun. It's not easy to win a national championship. We've been fortunate to have won a few but doesn't mean it's easy. Every single time, it's a challenge. A lot of things have to go your way and it's up to us to make sure they do go our way. Mark is a true freshman. He has the potential to win a national championship as a true freshman. I think that's exciting and something that should be motivating for him. If he does that's of course good news for our team. But the team being successful isn't all on his shoulders, or all on Zain's shoulders. It's a team effort that is needed this weekend.
Defending the title...
It certainly doesn't get any easier. I think your expectation and you just expect to win all the time. It's easy as a coach to just focus on winning and losing also, which is something you don't want to do. You don't want your kids focussing on winning and losing. You want them to focus on performance and effort and things we can control. As a coach its the same challenge as any individual. You have to keep teaching yourself the same lessons over and over again. Just be grateful and be excited. We're not trying to defend a national championship. We're trying to win another one right? We want to win another national championship. And we have the potential and opportunity to do that his weekend. It's up to us if we take advantage of that or not. it's certainly something to be excited about.
Travel schedule...
We're leaving tonight. We're bussing to Pittsburgh and flying out of Pittsburgh tomorrow so we're hoping we make it.
Joseph...
He has his first match at home. … That's who he has in the first round. A tough kid, tricky kid. So he has got to wrestle well and defend a loss in the first round of the national tournament, which is exciting. It's fun for him. He's done great. He keeps improving. His confidence has continue too improve. He' s guy , he believes he's going to win the national championship. You see that in the way he competes. Tough weight class. Martinez is tough. Massa is tough. A lot of tough kids in there. Every match is critical. He believes he can win and he's competing really well.
Brackets...
I don't look at them very closely. I want to know who they have. I knew who they had the first night when brackets came out. But I din't look at the brackets for a couple days. I don't want to focus on those or think about them. I don't want our guys to, so if I tell our guys to not worry about he brackets and I'm at home sweating over them … then I'm not really true to the word I'm trying to teach our team, right? So we don't focus a lot on our brackets, but the kids know. They know. As a competitor, I want to know. I want to know who I'm going to have in the second, third and fourth round but I'm going to take care of them one at a time. I'm not going to get ready for my semifinal before you win the first match. Just knowing who you have, I think - but everyone is different. Some kids don't want to know. Some kids do. So you just play it by the individuals in their preparation, I guess.
Toughest weight class...
I don't know. I think there are a lot of tough weight classes. You really don't know until five years down the road, or three years down the road, when these guys are wrestling for world and Olympic championships. Which guys are going to do better at the next level? It's the same thing in high school, right? You don't know how great a class is until they get into college. You just hope the classes are great when you have scholarships to spend, right? So it's hard to say right now. I think you'll know and you'll be able to look back, but to be able to make that guess right now is probably not a good idea for me to do.
Scouting...
There's video of everybody available now. In this day and age it's not hard to find video on anybody. There's lot of time in between matches too. You wrestle the first round at 10 am and you're back at 5 so there's a lot of down time in between rounds to get back and to focus on the next guy. We an't travel anybody outside the people who are going with us.
Pennsylvania HS wrestling...
You have some of the best Pennsylvania wrestlers ever, statistically, some really great wrestlers. Pennsylvania high school wrestling is excellent. I mean, t's so good that when we go we can't recruit juniors and seniors because they're already and signed and committed everywhere. You have to be watching the freshmen and the sophomores and making decisions a lot earlier now. Every school in the country is recruiting out of Pennsylvania right? You see that and It's very impressive. It goes back to the high quality coaching in the state, having so many Division I wrestling programs and college programs that are producing great high school coaches. There is incredible clubs as well that are available. Pennsylvania high school wrestling is very good. Kids wrestle a long tough seasons so the kids are prepared to wrestle a long tough season in college. Most states don't have that opportunity, so yeah, Pennsylvania is exceptional.
I'll also be running paraphrased comments here in this thread as it goes along. Starts now
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TRANSCRIPT - CAEL SANDERSON (March 13, 2017)
On Suriano/health...
He's down in the room right now, wrestling. So he's progressing along. It's looking good. So we're going to - I don't know what else you want to hear. He's in. He's in.
Everyone's healthy. I mean, anytime you come out of a Big Ten tournament, you're going to have some nicks and bruises but nothing - we're healthy and happy and excited. It's national tournament week. It's a good time to be alive right now.
Motivation from Big Tens...
I don't think so. I think the Big Ten tournament is different than the national tournament, which is different from the dual meets. We want to be at our best at every event. I don't think we wrestled terribly at the Big Ten. We could've wrestled better at a couple weights. Ohio State wrestled great. But, yeah, we want to win the national championship, right? That's the goal. That's the individual goal and that's the team goal, and that's the big picture. Not to take anything away from the Big Ten. We want to win the Big Ten as well. I don't think think it really changes much. Our guys know you get to pick and choose how you're going to compete, how you're going to think, how you're going to act. You can use that to your advantage and go out there and be at at your best or you can allow yourself to be distracted for whatever reason by whatever thing. I think that's one of the great things about sports, a great thing about an individual sport also. It's up to you. If you want to be the national champion, well you have to go win the national tournament, right? You do that by wining one match at a time, scoring one point at a time and keeping things simple and just being yourself. So I'm excited to see how our guys respond and react and how they choose to compete this week. I'm excited just like everybody else is.
Fostering attitude...
It's being consistent as a staff, I think. I think everything we do and say and what we tell them what we expect or what we want to see out of them, they have to see the same qualities out of us. I think it's just consistency. I think it's just focusing more on principles. As a coach, I try to focus more on principles - work ethic and gratitude and those things we talk about throughout the year. If you focus on principles, you have a better chance at being successful. That's where consistency comes from is principles. I'd say as as a staff we focus more on principles and have our kids focus more on principles.
Preparation...
We know the individual matches a week out so were preparing for those and trying to get individuals ready. Every kid has a different lifetime experience and they view things different so you have to work with them as individuals mentally in preparation. We're consistent. We have detailed records of everything that we've done every year and what works, what doesn't work, why did this not work. Sometimes you don't know. Sometimes you just have a great day; sometimes you just have a bad day. That's life. We're sticking to our guns and not changing anything and not panicking. Yeah, we didn't win the Big Ten, but we didn't come back and panic. Just got beat. For the most part our guys wrestled well. But this is the team. If the team wants to win, it's real simple, we just have to go score more points than the next team. There's really no secret to it.
On Gulibon...
Jimmy, we'll find out on Thursday, right? He's an individual and he's a tough kid. He works hard. He's been very consistent in his training from day one, from the first day he stepped on campus. He has the ability to wrestle well. He can go with anybody in the country. He has to make that decision and he has to be willing to do that. I think he's in good spirits now. I don't think he really low or down on himself after the Big Ten. I think he was frustrated because he was wrestling great. Obviously he did Not have a great tournament. The effort wasn't great, but he's bounced back. That's one of the things he's learned is to be more resilient. That's what we've seen when he's at his best. Because earlier in his career if he were to give up a takedown early that would be it. That was it. He went through his high career giving up a couple takedowns in four years and probably less than that in his youth. But you see him now he gives up takedowns all the time and he battles back and he keeps moving forward. Big Ten was an exception. We're just looking for his best effort and I think we'll get that. I'm optimistic and I'm hopeful. I think he'll wrestle well. He has the kid he lost to from Michigan State first round. Kid is tricky. He knows how to wrestle Jimmy. He's beaten Jimmy twice. He counters a lot of JImmy's shots. Really good with his re-shots, good scrambler, hard to finish on, but Jimmy can win that match and if he can start winning and get on a roll, he can really do a lot of damage in helping our team be successful.
Overall team capability...
Dual meet-wise, this is the best team we've had, right? We won at least seven matches in every dual and a lot of those big dual were on the road which makes it even more of a challenge. We've had some challenge with injuries this year. That's where we'll find out how strong of a program we are. Can we get the job done despite the setbacks? We're certainly going full-speed ahead and continue in gratitude. We are grateful for the opprotunity and the health and the strength of our guys and what they have. This has been a great team and we want to finish with a great effort. Great moments come from great opportunities and I think this is a great opportunity and we're looking forward to it.
David Taylor...
I think David is just feeling comfortable at his weight class now. He was a little large probably for 74kg when he made that jump up, getting his body to make that comfortable to feel comfortable with his strength and conditioning and timing. Sometimes it happens quicker than other times. It's taken him a little while. Now he's confident and he's big and strong and his timing and his conditioning. When he won the World Cup, conditioning was a large factor in some of those big matches, right? Anyone watching David right now they know that they'll have to deal with a guy who is going to wrestle every second and is going to scramble hard. A lot of times in freestyle wrestling you get in a big scramble guys aren't the same after that. Where David, we do that everyday. That's just part of how he trains. He's doing well. He's very confident. It's fun for me now that he's larger that I can wrestle with him more. I enjoy that and he enjoys it. My job is to get him ready to win a world championship. That was his goal coming in as a true freshman however many years ago it was. He said he wanted to be an Olympic champion, and it gives me a little bit more of an advantage. He's always wrestled with Cunningham and that's one of the reasons why David is good. He seeks out great training partners every day. But he's looking good. I'm excited for him.
...
It's just different because I can wrestle a little closer to 100 percent than if he's 40-30 pounds (lighter) …. We can battle more and I feel like that's one of the things that I need to help him prepare for because e's a guy who if you look at his college record, he didn't have a lot of good matches. He didn't have very many 1-, 2- 3- even 4- or 5-point matches. When you have a kid like that when they get into closer matches they need to be prepared for that, mentally and physically, so that's my job right now is to get him ready to win those close matches.
NCAA Seeds…
I think our guys got the serves they deserved. Nevills, I didn't understand that but outside of Nevills' weight class, I think our guys got the seeds earned throughout the year. You've go to make the regular season count and that's one why you do it is by seeding the tournament correctly. So I think we're in decent shape. We've been in worse shape with matchups. Regardless it's one match at a time. Thats what what it takes to be successful. We don't focus too much on our draws, but we do want to be aware and prepared obviously. Not over-prepared, but ready to go.
Nine-man contingent…
The team has to fight for every point. We have guys who can score bonus points. They just have to be looking for it. We have guys who have to win big matches. That's what it comes down to it, always has. Bonus points are huge, but big wins in the quarters and semifinals are bigger. As a team we've been in about every position. We've been the underdog, expected to win, even. … We've been in all positions and your mentality doesn't change. It's just be the best you can and enjoy it and make sure that enthusiasm as to be front and center in the way you compete. You're not going to do much good without enthusiasm as a team or an individual. If we want to win, we have to go win.
Mark Hall...
Mark is looking great. He really wrestled great in the Big Ten tournament. Third period he got real conservative and kind of shut down, but he knows better than that. He's a gamer and this is the big game. Everything's been preparation up until this point. His goal is to win the nationals and to win as a freshman. He won't be the first if he wins or the last. Freshmen win a lot and they're going to win more and more as we move forward in our sport. He's phenomenal in what he's doing. He's a guy who gets to pick and choose whether he wins or not. I mean, he's that good. He's excited and I'm excited for him. He's had plenty of time to prepare and a lot of times the Big ten tournament is the best preparation for the nationals. if you train correctly and have the right mindset. That's great preparation for what we're heading into now.
...
I'm not going to put that on Mark. Every single individual has a lot of potential to help our team at the national tournament. Take anyone of our kids out of the equation and it completely changes the opprotunity to be national champions. Mark is a freshman and we pulled him late so a lot of people look at him, but we have the same thing with Nick Nevills and Matt McCutcheon. It's his third time going to the national tournament. Bo Nickal, right? These guys, Nolf, Zain - if our team and individuals don't wrestle and do what they're capable of doing we're not going to win the national tournament. You just don't have a lot of room for error. That's what makes it fun. It's not easy to win a national championship. We've been fortunate to have won a few but doesn't mean it's easy. Every single time, it's a challenge. A lot of things have to go your way and it's up to us to make sure they do go our way. Mark is a true freshman. He has the potential to win a national championship as a true freshman. I think that's exciting and something that should be motivating for him. If he does that's of course good news for our team. But the team being successful isn't all on his shoulders, or all on Zain's shoulders. It's a team effort that is needed this weekend.
Defending the title...
It certainly doesn't get any easier. I think your expectation and you just expect to win all the time. It's easy as a coach to just focus on winning and losing also, which is something you don't want to do. You don't want your kids focussing on winning and losing. You want them to focus on performance and effort and things we can control. As a coach its the same challenge as any individual. You have to keep teaching yourself the same lessons over and over again. Just be grateful and be excited. We're not trying to defend a national championship. We're trying to win another one right? We want to win another national championship. And we have the potential and opportunity to do that his weekend. It's up to us if we take advantage of that or not. it's certainly something to be excited about.
Travel schedule...
We're leaving tonight. We're bussing to Pittsburgh and flying out of Pittsburgh tomorrow so we're hoping we make it.
Joseph...
He has his first match at home. … That's who he has in the first round. A tough kid, tricky kid. So he has got to wrestle well and defend a loss in the first round of the national tournament, which is exciting. It's fun for him. He's done great. He keeps improving. His confidence has continue too improve. He' s guy , he believes he's going to win the national championship. You see that in the way he competes. Tough weight class. Martinez is tough. Massa is tough. A lot of tough kids in there. Every match is critical. He believes he can win and he's competing really well.
Brackets...
I don't look at them very closely. I want to know who they have. I knew who they had the first night when brackets came out. But I din't look at the brackets for a couple days. I don't want to focus on those or think about them. I don't want our guys to, so if I tell our guys to not worry about he brackets and I'm at home sweating over them … then I'm not really true to the word I'm trying to teach our team, right? So we don't focus a lot on our brackets, but the kids know. They know. As a competitor, I want to know. I want to know who I'm going to have in the second, third and fourth round but I'm going to take care of them one at a time. I'm not going to get ready for my semifinal before you win the first match. Just knowing who you have, I think - but everyone is different. Some kids don't want to know. Some kids do. So you just play it by the individuals in their preparation, I guess.
Toughest weight class...
I don't know. I think there are a lot of tough weight classes. You really don't know until five years down the road, or three years down the road, when these guys are wrestling for world and Olympic championships. Which guys are going to do better at the next level? It's the same thing in high school, right? You don't know how great a class is until they get into college. You just hope the classes are great when you have scholarships to spend, right? So it's hard to say right now. I think you'll know and you'll be able to look back, but to be able to make that guess right now is probably not a good idea for me to do.
Scouting...
There's video of everybody available now. In this day and age it's not hard to find video on anybody. There's lot of time in between matches too. You wrestle the first round at 10 am and you're back at 5 so there's a lot of down time in between rounds to get back and to focus on the next guy. We an't travel anybody outside the people who are going with us.
Pennsylvania HS wrestling...
You have some of the best Pennsylvania wrestlers ever, statistically, some really great wrestlers. Pennsylvania high school wrestling is excellent. I mean, t's so good that when we go we can't recruit juniors and seniors because they're already and signed and committed everywhere. You have to be watching the freshmen and the sophomores and making decisions a lot earlier now. Every school in the country is recruiting out of Pennsylvania right? You see that and It's very impressive. It goes back to the high quality coaching in the state, having so many Division I wrestling programs and college programs that are producing great high school coaches. There is incredible clubs as well that are available. Pennsylvania high school wrestling is very good. Kids wrestle a long tough seasons so the kids are prepared to wrestle a long tough season in college. Most states don't have that opportunity, so yeah, Pennsylvania is exceptional.
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