Despite having one of its best seasons in 20 years, the No. 8 North Carolina wrestling team cut itself no slack on Sunday after a loss to No. 5 Arizona State in its last dual meet of the season.
A year that saw 14 dual-meet victories for the Tar Heels — the highest tally since 2002 — was capped off with a 22-9 defeat at the hands of the Sun Devils at Carmichael Arena. The Tar Heels were coming off a three-meet win streak that included victories against top-25 teams against Pittsburgh and Cornell, as well as avoiding a potential upset loss to Virginia just two days before Sunday’s meet.
The fans might forgive the team for a tough loss against a top-five opponent after a week like that. The only people that won’t forgive them? Themselves.
“Our fight and our effort wasn’t there like it had been all year,” head coach Coleman Scott said. “It’s a team that wasn’t doing much late in the matches and giving up a lot of ground.”
After dropping the first match of the meet, the Tar Heels went on a hot streak, winning the next three straight matches. A big victory came in the 141-pound match, where No. 12 Zach Sherman scored a huge leg-sweep takedown and a late escape to win the match, 4-2. Even with his own success, Sherman said he was focused on the group's performance as a whole.
“The energy that this team has and had throughout the whole year, it’s pretty much been built on momentum,” Sherman said. “We’ve kept it rolling as much as we could, and today we just didn’t get the job done.”
Those three consecutive wins would be the only ones for UNC that day, as North Carolina dropped the next six matches in tough losses.
Perhaps the hardest loss for the Tar Heels came in the 157-pound match, where No. 16 A.C. Headlee lost to Arizona State's No. 12 Jacori Teemer, 3-2. In his last match in Carmichael Arena, the senior was taken down in a tiebreaker.
“It’s kinda tough looking at it right now," Headlee said. "I’m still hanging my head. It’s rough. It would’ve been a lot more fun to go out on a win.”
