The Lake Erie Storm fell to no. 21 Gannon with a final score of 31-9 tonight.

 

The Storm started with a 6-0 lead with a win by forfeit at 125 (Jacob Johnson). But Lake Erie dropped the next seven consecutive matches in a row to Gannon, including one forfeit at 197, three decisions, two major decisions, and a technical fall. 

 

Capping the night for the Storm with a win at heavyweight was Devin Uzelac. The senior earned a win by a 4-1 decision. "It feels really good!", said Uzelac. "I've been close the last couple weeks, so on senior night, especially in front of a good crowd, it's really nice to get a win. I'm happy I finished strong".

 

Head coach Jeff Breese had a lot to say regarding the Storm's performance against no. 21 Gannon. "Tonight was a tough night.", said Jeff Breese. "In a lot of respects, it's not going to look good on the scorebook for us, but I was pleased with how we competed in some weight classes but the bottom line is that Gannon outworked us a little bit tonight.

 

If you truly look at the box score and not just the team score, we lost a match in overtime and we lost a match 12-8 that was at one point a one-point match until we had to go for broke with five seconds left to try and get a takedown. 

We were right in that match. We got out-hustled a little bit and that was the one-point difference we had to try and make up.

 

157 closed the gap significantly in that match, and that's something you don't see in the box score. I think we lost by major decision by that guy at the Midwest Classic earlier this season and closed the gap and was basically a takedown away from a win at 157. 

 

And then 165 we competed really well for two periods against a top-ten guy in the country. The first time we wrestled that guy we got dominated from the moment it started to the moment it finished. This time we were in the match tied going into the third period, and we just didn't win the third period.

 

It's to be expected with the number of freshmen we have in the lineup. We're not pleased with the overall result but we had an awesome crowd. I think we were competitive enough that the people that came out and experienced it did see a good show. They saw a fantastic version of Gannon, but they didn't see the best version of us, but it was still entertaining. It was loud, it was exciting, and matches were fun to watch for the most part.

 

And then both teams had odd things happen pre-match and weigh-ins, where both teams had a guy not make weight, which is extremely odd this late in the season. I think both guys were at weight earlier in the day and didn't make weight, it was just a bizarre, bizarre occurrence. 

 

I'm happy we had a silver lining on senior night. Our only senior that wrestled tonight is Devin Uzelac and he capped the night with a win for us, and he looked great doing it. He's been working his tail off, and he's been so close for about three weeks now. Uzelac has lost about four matches by one-point and so it was so nice seeing him break through and get one and execute on a game plan a bit better than he had.

 

If you go look at the headline, the headline is that we got beat pretty darn bad tonight. If you look deeper into it, we still have a lot of things we can build on and look towards the future with.

 

But at the same time, we have to decide if we're not going to get beat pretty darn bad in dual meets. We've lost some dual meets that were winnable for us this year. We have to start to change that."

 

The Storm is up for a huge test this week, taking on their final dual opponent of the year on the road, facing no. 5 overall Notre Dame College on Wednesday.

 

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