On Friday, Feb. 7, the Pittsburgh Panthers’ wrestling squad defeated the Virginia Tech Hokies 19-14 to clinch a share of the first ACC title in any sport in school history. Going into this clash, the Panthers had climbed the rankings all the way up to number 6 in the country according to Intermat while the Hokies sat at 16th.
Anthony Zanetta captured his 100th collegiate victory with a win over Virginia Tech’s Joey Dance in the 125- pound weight class. Dance was ranked 19th in the nation but Zanetta took the win 3-1 to start Pittsburgh with a 3-0 lead.
Shelton Mack and Edgar Bright, who wrestle in the 133 and 141 pound weight categories respectively, followed up Zanetta’s decision with regular decisions of their own running the Panther’s lead up to 9-0 over the Hokies.
Virginia Tech then started on a little scoring run of their own starting with a victory at 149 pounds by Zach Neibert over Pittsburgh Mikey Racciato 7-3. Neibert, ranked 17th in the nation, finally gave the Hokies their first points of the match.
The Hokies also had victories at 157 as well as 165 pounds. One being a tech fall by Sam Mastriani over Pitt’s 157 pounder Ronnie Garbinsky. Mastriani posted a 28-13 victory for Virginia Tech, and going into the 174 pound matchup, the Hokies had the lead 11-9 over the Panthers.
Tyler Wilps, ranked 7th nationally, quickly regained the lead for the Panthers by virtue of a 13-3 major decision over Virginia Tech’s John Dickson. Followed up by a decision by Max Thomusseit over nationally ranked Nick Vetterlein ran the lead to 16-11 Panthers with two bouts remaining.
Nick Bonaccorsi who is ranked 18th in the nation then took the mat for Pittsburgh looking to seal the match against Chris Penny, ranked 20th in the nation. It began a very tight match but Bonaccorsi soon opened up a 5-1 lead after the second period and finished the match with another take down making the final score 8-3 in Bonaccorsi’s favor.
This match put Pitt up 19-11 and made the dual out of reach for the Hokies with only the heavyweight bout left.
At heavyweight, Mike Gregory looked to defeat Hokie wrestler Tyler Walz. It was a very entertaining match to end the night, but Gregory ending up falling just short of a victory losing to Walz by a score of 12-10, which is an extremely high scoring match for heavyweights.
With the final match going to Virginia Tech, it made the final score of the night 19-14. This clinched at least a share of the ACC Wrestling Title for the Pittsburgh Panther’s grapplers, who are now set to clash with rival Edinboro on Friday, Feb. 14 at 7 PM. The following day, the Panthers will battle the Michigan Wolverines at home at 7 PM.
Those matches do not mean nearly as much though, because now with their victory over Virginia Tech, the only team standing between your Panther grapplers and winning sole possession of their first ACC Wrestling Championship is North Carolina. This match is unfortunately at North Carolina on February 22nd at noon; therefore, Pitt will not have their home crowd to feed off throughout the dual.
After that, the Panthers will engage in their individual postseason beginning with the Individual ACC Wrestling Championships on March 8th in Blacksburg, VA, followed by the Individual NCAA Championships taking place on March 20-22 at Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Click here to watch WTAE’s Guy Junker interview the Pitt Wrestling Team and talk about their success this year in the ACC.
