After 2 losses, focus shifts to Big Tens

The IU wrestling team dropped its final two matches of the regular season this weekend and will now prepare for the Big Ten Tournament. \nFive Hoosiers took victories Friday during a 19-15 loss at No. 13 Northwestern. While they lost, IU coach Duane Goldman said he was happy with a lot of the things that he saw in some of the individual matches.\n"I felt as a whole we really wrestled a good dual meet," Goldman said. "We had a number of guys really step up."\nThe Northwestern loss was followed on Sunday by a 31-9 Hoosiers loss at No. 3 Michigan, in a dual meet where only two Hoosiers helped out their Big Ten seeding with a win.\nIU senior and defending national champion Joe Dubuque won his 26th straight match, defeating No. 7 John Valez of Northwestern 6-1 to improve his record on the season to 19-0. Dubuque did not compete against Michigan, and in his place, sophomore Blane Culp lost a 13-1 major decision against Michael Watts in Culp's first dual meet action of the season. Dubuque finished the regular season with a perfect record, the first Hoosier to complete the feat since Brian Dolph finished the 1989 regular season 13-0 before finishing third in the NCAA finals.\nBoth freshman Andrae Hernandez and sophomore Brandon Becker went 2-0 on the weekend. The No. 18-ranked Hernandez defeated Daniel Quintela of the Wildcats 10-3 and pinned Jim Shutich of Michigan just under seven minutes into the match to improve to 7-1 in the Big Ten. Becker, ranked No. 8, improved to 5-3 in the Big Ten after beating Northwestern's Greg Hagel 5-0 and No. 13 Steve Luke of Michigan 5-3. The win over Luke was Becker's third-straight Big Ten win, which snapped a three-match losing streak to Big Ten opponents. Goldman said Becker's and Hernandez's matches were crucial to improving their individual seeds.\n"Brandon definitely improved his seed and Andrae kept himself in line to get a decent seed," Goldman said.\nJunior Matt Cooper and sophomore Dave Herman both took wins against Northwestern with Cooper winning a 5-3 overtime victory to beat Marty Gould and Herman beating No. 9 Dustin Fox by an identical score.\nAgainst Northwestern, both Max Dean and Justin Curran lost close matches by scores of 1-0 and 4-2, respectively. If either Dean or Curran had come away with the victory, it would have been enough for the Hoosiers to take the win.\n"We had a couple opportunities to win," Goldman said. "There were two other matches that I think we really could have won. They were important seeding matches, and as it turns out, matches that would have won the dual meet \nfor us."\nWith the two losses, IU closed out the regular season with an 11-6 record and is 2-6 in the Big Ten, having lost its last six dual meets. The Big Tens will take place at Assembly Hall March 4 and 5. The pre-seeds will be announced this week and will be finalized at a coaches' meeting March 3.