Tom Minkel Quotations

We wrestled a terrific dual as a team against Purdue, which is what we have been looking for all season. Everyone wrestled hard and we had some guys step up big at a few weight classes. Darren's match was really the marquee one of the dual, that is as good of a college match as I have seen in a while.

Most wrestlers are kind of short and he's tall and rangy, so immediately he poses problems for wrestlers because it's an unconventional body type.

Nick had an extraordinary regular season by going undefeated with 13 falls, especially with level of competition we face. Hopefully, he can carry that momentum into the postseason.

When he was maybe around 8, I knew he'd be special. Already then they were wrestling a lot. They just wrestled everywhere, all over the country.

I thought we wrestled well today, but there is still a lot of wrestling to be done. Nick and Andy (Simmons) dominated their weight classes, and we had some thrilling matches at other weights as well.

When we're in Ann Arbor, it tends to be more of a 50/50 crowd which is unusual anywhere else we're visiting. It always rocks, and it's always very intense. It gives you some extra voltage when you wrestle.

We are excited about Rashad joining our team for the season. He is a marvelous athlete and we look forward to him bringing the same as an integral part of our coaching staff.

Coming off a long tournament at Penn State this weekend, I just don't think we had that spark. But at the same time, Central wrestled quite a dual. They won all the one-point matches.

There were some great matches today between some terrific wrestlers, but anytime you lose to Michigan it's tough. We had some opportunities throughout the dual, but we weren't able to take advantage of those situations.

It was a heck of a dual. It was a real team effort and a good way to start off the second half of our schedule, especially after the long layoff we have had.

In order for us to be as successful as we want to be as a team, our team really has to be aggressive and use our strength and power. We are still lacking in some areas, but overall we did better tonight with that, especially in the last five matches. Darren McKnight is really our leader in that department.