Way Too Early Lineup Look: 2020-21 Ohio State Buckeyes
Way Too Early Lineup Look: 2020-21 Ohio State Buckeyes
Taking an early look at who should be the starter at all 10 weight classes for the Ohio State Buckeyes during the 2020-2021 college season.
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Another week removed from the NCAA tournament that never happened, another week of way too early lineup looks. Let’s head to Columbus, where the roster is young and full of options for starters.
Although Penn State and Iowa were the clear 1-2 heading into Minneapolis, I feel pretty confident Ohio State would have won a trophy and I was picking them to finish third. They lose the leadership and team points of Kollin Moore and Luke Pletcher, but such is life in college wrestling.
It's fun to do these now (quarantine or not) because it's great to look back on them and see how things change from the week after NCAAs to mid-summer to right before the season and into the postseason. Also, I think I speak for everyone when I say we're hoping everything with COVID-19 clears up in ways that minimally impact the programs and their families moving forward.
2020-21 Ohio State Projected Lineup
125: Malik Heinselman
133: Jordan Decatur
141: Dylan D'Emilio
149: Sammy Sasso
157: Anthony Echemendia
165: Carson Kharchla
174: Kaleb Romero
184: Rocky Jordan
197: Gavin Hoffman
285: Chase Singletary
We've known this would be coming for a while, but Tom Ryan and his staff will be guiding a young and unproven squad. The entire roster has a combined four wins at the national tournament to their names. That doesn't mean their future performance will be hindered, it just means they're going to be expected to do things they've never done before. But isn't that the standard for the Buckeyes at this point?
Of the five lineup looks I've done so far, this team is by far the one with the most question marks and roster battles coming. I would say they'll be the most fun to do for a depth chart for later this summer when we tackle the whole of these rosters.
Lineup Looks: Iowa | Penn State | Cornell | Michigan
125: Malik Heinselman, JR
I’m not sure what to make of Heinselman’s second season in the Scarlet & Gray. He doubled the amount of NCAA qualifiers he beat from three to six. But his seed at nationals fell from 25 to 27, his winning percentage went from 66.7 down to 51.6, and his bonus rate dropped as well. Perhaps the quarantine and potential time off from freestyle will help Malik get bigger, stronger, and better on the mat. I’m not sure what his ceiling is, but I definitely think he can be a top-15 guy.
Brady Koontz and Jacob Decatur should provide depth and be given a real opportunity to try to take the spot, but I see them as more spot starters or guys who are plugged in if Heinselman gets hurt.
133: Jordan Decatur, SO
There’s a part of me that thinks they should redshirt Decatur and let the weight clear out a little, but Ohio State almost always tries to put the best guy out at all 10 weights. Dylan Koontz was third at CKLV, so the cupboard's not completely bare if they do redshirt Decatur. Ohio State has an excellent freestyle group at the lightweights, but that didn’t translate on the folkstyle side of things last year. Decatur was one match above .500 and had no wins over qualifiers. The improvements he needs to make are things that many other wrestlers have fixed in college: gas tank, getting out from bottom and riding on top, plus finishing shots that are initially stopped.
141: Dylan D’Emilio, FR
So, who replaces Luke Pletcher? I’ve got D’Emilio as the favorite right now, but I imagine JD Stickley, a past Ironman champ, will also be given a fair shake. Then there’s Quinn Kinner, who simply couldn’t make 133 for an entire season. With Pletcher gone, I’m curious if he feels comfortable cutting back down or if he wants to make a run at 157 again, a weight that will likewise have a roster battle. The wildcard is Anthony Echemendia, who came in as a 141, but I think winds up at 157. We only saw D’Emilio twice, injury defaulting out after losing to Kelen McKenna at the Lake Erie Storm Open in November and then not again until the Edinboro Open in February. He went 5-1 there, losing to Julian Chlebove in the quarters.
149: Sammy Sasso, SO
In addition to guys like Pletcher and Moore who never got the chance to possibly close out their careers with a title, I’m also bummed for the stud freshmen like Sasso who miss out on the chance to be four-time All-Americans. It’s one thing to be seeded third like Sasso was and miss the podium because you couldn’t get it done. It’s quite another to have the opportunity wholesale taken away from you when you were healthy going in.
He had four wins over guys seeded in the top 10, including splitting with top seed Pat Lugo. With seniors like Lugo, Kolodzik, Zacherl, and Thomsen gone, I see no reason Sasso won’t be top-five at the weight once again, and yes that includes the potential for Yianni and Eierman to enter the fray. A third of his matches ended in a tech or pin, and with majors half of them were bonus. He can be very defensive sometimes, but I attribute that more to him being raised on having been trained to have excellent leg defense his whole life. He’s going to be the captain and lifeblood of this program for three more years.
157: Anthony Echemendia, FR
This has the potential to be a roster battle if Echemendia wants to go 41 and Quinn Kinner stays up at 157. They also have incoming freshman Bryce Hepner, but I think he redshirts. The starter at Big Tens this year was Elijah Cleary, a Florida native who was 14-12 against D1 competition, but did beat a couple of qualifiers this season. But if Echemendia goes up, he should be the guy. They also could see some lineup juggling down the line with weight changes like what happened with Micah Jordan and Ke-Shawn Hayes.
165: Carson Kharchla, FR
Here we get to a point where there are two spots for three guys. Or I guess more accurately three spots for four guys, but either way, someone very good is going to be sitting on the bench. Right now, I think 165 is Kharchla’s spot to lose, which means Ethan Smith and Kaleb Romero will battle for 174 or one of them heads up to 184 to try to take the spot from Rocky Jordan. He defeated Smith 3-2 in the wrestle-off at the beginning of the year.
In his two matches against NCAA qualifiers, he teched Troy Keller and pinned Bernie Truax. Kharchla won four tournaments and went 16-0 with a 56% bonus rate. Combine that with being younger, a more highly rated recruit coming out of high school and a better fit for the weight, and this seems like a no-brainer.
174: Kaleb Romero, JR
It'll be between Ethan Smith and Kaleb Romero. When they were both the same weight in the 2018-19 season, it was Smith who was chosen for Big Tens and obviously NCAAs by default as the conference starter, but I think Romero wasn't at full health for February and March. The question then becomes, what’s changed since then? Romero was the six seed at 174 and Smith the 12 seed at 165, so there's a clear performance advantage there at the weight. There’s also a style component to it, as Smith fires off more offensive attacks but Romero is stout defensively.
Romero lost twice to Labriola and Lydy, plus losses to Michael Kemerer and Mark Hall, but reversed a loss to Devin Skatzka from the regular season at Big Tens. There’s an argument that Smith’s results and trouble finishing against the quality guys could be in part attributed to a tougher weight cut. But when you watch the win over David McFadden and the 14-10 battle with Alex Marinelli I think you see why the Buckeyes have a good problem on their hands. No matter what I think tOSU is throwing out a top-10 guy with AA potential.
184: Rocky Jordan, SO
This applies to many guys, but man is it difficult to take stock of Rocky without the benefit of an NCAA tournament. He missed his whole redshirt year due to injury, didn’t get the results he wanted in the first half of his season when he was down at 174, and then wound up the 14 seed at 184 with an 18-6 record at the weight. His best win was over 7 seed Taylor Venz, on the road, in which he rode out the third to win, though he did get pinned by Venz at Big Tens. We’ll all be looking to see what kind of jumps he can make during year three in Columbus, with the pressure of his brothers combining for 7 AA placements before him.
197: Gavin Hoffman, SO
There was an idea floating around that Chase Singletary was going to drop to 197 for the 2020-21 season, but that was when Greg Kerkvliet was still at Ohio State and before he suffered a season-ending injury. That leaves Gavin Hoffman, who was recruited as a 197-pounder. He had a strange season, starting off at 184 (where he spent the entirety of his redshirt year) before moving up to 285 for five tournaments. I think with Moore gone he settles at his proper college weight and his results start going up and to the right.
285: Chase Singletary, JR
Gas Tank Gary took the nation by storm this year, and it was awesome seeing a brand-new facility in the Covelli Center have sellout crowds that really attached themselves to this guy who wrestled last in most of the duals. I originally tried to brand him as "Garyano Rivera" as the closer for Ohio State. He really did have a flair for the dramatic, scoring the winning takedown five times in the final minute of regulation or overtime, plus the David Showunmi takedown that came just outside the final minute.
However, it seems like they're going back to Singletary if he comes back healthy. He had just three wins this year because he got hurt at CKLV, but they were all over qualifiers: 8-3 over seven seed Demetrius Thomas, 4-2 over 18 seed John Borst, and 2-1 over 16 seed Dalton Robertson.
