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ASU finishes strong, eyes conference tournament |
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Tuesday, 21 February 2006 |
 | David Mulvaney
There was no escaping the Appalachian grasp Thursday night. ASU’s 165-pound Neal Martin defeated Anderson’s 149-pound Jared Skinner 7-0 to help push App to a 35-15 victory. |
by ERIK RHYNE
Sports Reporter
The Appalachian State wrestling team put on one of its strongest showings of the season Thursday, defeating Anderson University and Carson-Newman College by scores of 35-15 and 37-9 respectively.
“The team wrestled fairly well,” Appalachian head coach Paul Mance said. “Most everybody went out there and wrestled good matches. All in all, it was a good night. We haven’t been having these kind of nights.”
ASU was in cruise control during the matches. Appalachian gained the
lead early and never gave either team a chance to make it a contest.
The Mountaineers also honored three seniors as Thursday would be the
last time Lee Roper, Eric Burns and Tim Goodwin wrestled for ASU in
Boone.
“This is the last time I will wrestle in Varsity Gym,” Roper said. “I
love this place and I love Appalachian. I enjoyed wrestling with my
team one last time.”
The night could not have ended any better for Burns and Roper. Both wrestlers went 2-0 on the night.
Burns won his first match by forfeit and his second by pin fall in the 149-pound weight class.
Roper, at 165-pounds, won by a technical fall and by pin.
Adam Wilson, Marcus Cox, Neal Martin and Josh Carroll all won both of their matches.
With wins in both of its matches, ASU finished the season with a record of 11-8-1.
This was Mance’s 23rd winning season in his 30 years at the helm.
The Mountaineers finished the season on a three-match winning streak, which tied their longest streak of the season.
Roper said Appalachian has a lot of momentum heading into the SoCon tournament, which begins March 4 in Lexington, Va.
“We’ve got that three-match win streak and everyone is healthy now,” he
said. “We’re rolling into conference. We’re ready to go.”
Even though they finished strongly, Appalachian has struggled against Southern Conference opponents, going 1-4 in SoCon action.
Mance said the losses could have gone either way.
 | David Mulvaney
ASU's Lee Roper finishes off the last match of his college career with a bang, dominating Anderson's Matt Godwin and winning 16-0. |
“We can certainly wrestle [The] Citadel in a match and beat them,” he said.
“We lost by a point to [the University of North Carolina at
Greensboro], we could have beat them. We’re definitely a lot better
than Davidson [College], we just had a bad night. [The University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga] is a team that will be tough for anyone to
beat.”
Even with tough competition, Mance believes it is anyone’s title.
“Chattanooga had a great team last year and had seven guys seeded
first,” he said. “I think only three of them won a title. You never
know what’s going to happen in a wrestling match.
You could be seeded
first, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to win.”
Before the conference tournament starts, Roper and Mance said the team has to work on and improve conditioning.
“We still die in the third period a little bit,” Roper said. “We’ll
take care of that in the weight room. That’s something real easy to
take care of.”
On the tournament Roper said, “I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be one of the last times I wrestle. I can’t wait.”
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