Three weeks ago, Maryland wrestling 141-pounder Ryan Diehl watched as Penn State’s Jimmy Gulibon raised his hand after a 9-4 decision. Penn State blew out the Terps, and they finished winless in the Big Ten.
Saturday night, Diehl reversed his fortune by pinning Gulibon at the Big Ten Championships in Bloomington, Indiana, completing the second of three upsets and qualifying him for the NCAA Wrestling Championships.
The 13th-seeded Diehl defeated Minnesota’s sixth-seeded Christopher Carton (No. 13 nationally), second-seeded Gulibon (No. 10) and third-seeded Tommy Thorn of Minnesota (No. 11) to finish fifth in a sequence he described as “crazy.” He notched the highest ranking of any Terp ever at the Big Ten Championships.
“I wrestled my first match here, and it was not a good performance, but we had to put that aside and just keep wrestling,” Diehl said. “We needed two more wins to make NCAAs, and I did what I had to do and built on it from there. I have the confidence to be the top guy.”
Diehl wrestled in five dual matches this season after missing more than two months due to an injury, and he went 3-2 in that period. The redshirt sophomore will join 133-pounder Billy Rappo and 149-pounder Alfred Bannister in St. Louis in two weeks.
Rappo heads to the NCAA Championships for the first time, in his final season, after finishing in the ninth and final automatic qualifier spot due to his takedown on Wisconsin’s Eli Stickley.
“It’s what I’ve been working for my whole life, wrestling at the NCAA tournament,” Rappo said. “We’re not done yet; we’ve still got two weeks of training before this big tournament. My main goal is to be an All-American, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
Bannister defeated Rutgers’ Ken Theobold before falling to No. 1 Zain Retherford of Penn State. Despite the loss, Bannister locked up a top-six spot and an automatic bid, finishing sixth overall.
He, like Diehl, missed significant time this season. After an 11-0 start to the season, Bannister sat out the final month of the campaign with a knee injury but returned to snatch a spot at the NCAA Championships.
“What we preach a lot of times with our guys is, ‘You’ve got to believe in yourself first,'” coach Kerry McCoy said. “For those guys to believe that they could get it done was important.”
The Terps finished 11th in the team standings in Bloomington but posted the program’s highest ever score in the Big Ten Championships. Their three automatic qualifiers are the most the program has had since joining the conference in 2014. Heavyweight Youssif Hemida, who finished seventh over the weekend, could also grab an at-large bid, McCoy said.
After finishing in last place the past two seasons with scores of 7.5 in 2016 and 10.5 in 2015, the Terps notched 32 points behind Diehl’s impressive outing.
“It’s definitely not where we want to park our car and stay forever,” McCoy said. “But it’s definitely a step in the right direction.”
