Wednesday Scrambler: Is Cy-Hawk Wrestling Saved?

Since beginning his time as head coach in Iowa City, Tom Brands has never lost to Iowa State in a dual meet. Ten seasons, 10 wins, and the majority of them haven’t been competitive. Don’t get us wrong, these blowouts are quite enjoyable, but wouldn’t it be nice to see a competitive event, maybe just once?

Well, given the additions of former Brands-coached NCAA Champions — Brent Metcalf, Derek St. John, as well as 3-time All-American Mike Zadick — to Cyclone head coach Kevin Dresser’s staff, we may have that in store soon.

Of course, it’s no guarantee the first-year coaching contingent immediately turns the tides of a program that fell to the wayside under Kevin Jackson — or ever, for that matter. At minimum, we’ll be in for fireworks early next season when the Hawkeyes head to Hilton to take on their in-state rivals.

Let’s break this down. Dresser, a former Hawkeye who took over at Virginia Tech after Brands’ 2006 departure, just hired one of the all time Iowa greats who happens to have had a hell of a time leaving Blacksburg to follow Brands to Iowa City, so much so that Brands wouldn’t wrestle the Hokies. That was a long way of saying there’s some bad blood here.

While St. John and Zadick don’t bring the same type of intrigue as Dresser and Metcalf, there’s still the fact that they won postseason tournaments with the Hawkeyes. It’s a good thing this dual won’t be on BTN — Shane Sparks may finally short circuit.

On paper, these moves look good for the Cyclones, and our counterparts at WRNL seem excited about the hires. They get into the logistics of the staff, as does the St. John video below, but here’s the short of it, in case you don’t want to bounce from the page:

• All four coaches are most familiar with light to middle weights, so there are question marks surrounding who will teach up the big boys
• Per Dresser, the whole situation is fluid and it’ll take some time to work out the kinks that come from playing “musical chairs”
• It sounds like Metcalf’s the safest bet to run the Cyclone RTC
• St. John’s likely going to be on the road more than he was at any of his previous postgrad coaching stops

Okay, okay, that’s enough talk about the Cyclones for today, we’ll revisit closer to the season.

We’ll see what it holds, but it should be much more interesting than any point in the past decade.

In quick baseball news, the Fighting Hellers won their seventh-consecutive game Tuesday afternoon, a 4-3 win over South Dakota State. Kyle Shimp got his first win of the season, with a trio ribbies coming from first baseman Jake Adams, and superhero right fielder Robert Neustrom driving accounting for the other run.

You can check out the box score here, as well as Max’s preview for today’s game, which is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. It’s supposed to rain all day, hopefully the boys are able to get this one in.

How about a couple of nuggets before we send you off?

- The Cory Clark love train continued as he hopped on USA Wrestling’s podcast. In case you missed it last week, Clark got his own Day of Recognition from the Iowa Legislation.

- High school journalists in Pittsburgh, Kansas questioned their newly-hired principal’s credentials. The principal resigned.

- One of the coolest weeks of the year, Mission Creek, is underway in Iowa City. Andrew Bird played Hancher Tuesday evening, telling the crowd his parents met outside Currier Hall in 1960. The full festival schedule is here if you’d like to take a look.

- The MLB is back, and a day after getting a shiny new contract, Cardinals outfielder Stephen Piscotty probably wishes Tuesday’s game never happened.