• Photo Showcase: Iowa at Nebraska wrestling

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LINCOLN — His giant oval belt buckle shining like a silver Hawkeye dollar against an all-black outfit, Iowa's Terry Brands rocked and paced and stomped and screamed throughout UI's dual at Nebraska.

“Pressure!” he yelled. “Pressure!”

And he's just the assistant.

Neither he nor his twin brother, head coach Tom Brands, wanted the No. 2 Hawkeyes to give the No. 7 Huskers any hope, especially with a stuffed-to-the-gills NU Coliseum ready to explode at the mere whiff of an upset.

Iowa complied Friday night with a dominating 24-9 win, clinching the dual with two matches left.

“We shut the door in a lot of places,” said Tom Brands, more conservatively dressed in a blue button-down shirt and khakis. “You don't want to give your opponent any breathing room. Ever. You let up, that's when you end up giving guys opportunities.”

Even with its unbeaten dual streak snapped last week, Iowa was still Iowa. Its wrestlers set the tone in nearly every match, drawing several NU stalling calls. They scored takedowns late in the period near the edge of the mat. They stayed invulnerable to pins.

Hawkeye fans — lining the hallways and back stairwells of the Coliseum during the match — popped off several “Let's Go Hawks” chants. They walked down onto the mat afterward for pictures with Tom Brands. A guy in black-and-gold overalls was the first Iowa fan Brands saw when he got off the bus.

“It was just like we were in Iowa City,” Brands grinned. “It's no surprise.”

NU coach Mark Manning, meanwhile, chomped his gum and fumed after the match. He hadn't seen this Husker team all season — cautious, mistake-prone, maybe a little nervous in front of 3,526 juiced fans.

“They outhustled us,” Manning said. “That's hard to say ... they weren't better. They just outhustled us. That made them better.”

For Nebraska (10-1) to have much chance Friday, it had to avoid bonus-point losses and win several swing matches.

But Iowa 125-pounder Matt McDonough pinned Shawn Nagel with 10 seconds left in the second period. And in swing matches, NU captured only the heavyweight bout, as No. 9 Tucker Lane scored a double-leg takedown to beat No. 8 Bobby Telford 4-1.

“He's been in a lot of big matches,” Manning said. “His savviness showed.”

The other key matches belonged to Iowa (8-1). At 141, No. 3 Montell Marion beat NU's Jake Sueflohn 9-6 in an aggressive, physical match. Sueflohn, a freshman, took an early 2-0 lead on a takedown, but had to take several timeouts for a bleeding nose. Sueflohn made mistakes, Manning said, and Marion — a senior national title contender — capitalized.

At 149, Iowa's Mike Kelly beat Brandon Wilbourn 7-3 in a battle of redshirt freshmen. The Hawkeyes won by the same score at 165, when No. 9 Mike Evans beat No. 3 Robert Kokesh, who seemed a step slow and off-balance in the biggest match of his young career.

“Hard lesson there, boy,” Manning said of Kokesh. “We didn't wrestle well there.”

What lessons could Nebraska take from the beating? Manning wouldn't say. He had them in his head. His wrestlers will discover them this weekend in practice. And Manning will see if those lessons take hold next weekend when NU wrestles Indiana and Purdue.

“A couple guys — their minds were not in the Coliseum,” Manning said. “We've got to find where the heck they were. And we're gonna find out in a hurry.”

• Individual results: 125 pounds: Matt McDonough, UI, fall Shawn Nagel, NU, 4:50. 133: Tony Ramos, UI, dec. Ridge Kiley, NU, 10-7. 141: Montell Marion, UI, dec. Jake Sueflohn, NU, 9-6. 149: Mike Kelly, UI, dec. Brandon Wilbourn, NU, 7-3. 157: James Green, NU, dec. Nick Moore, UI, 12-7. 165: Mike Evans, UI, dec. Robert Kokesh, NU, 7-3. 174: Ethen Lofthouse, UI, dec. Tyler Koehn, NU, 8-1. 184: Josh Ihnen, NU, dec. Vinnie Wagner, UI, 10-5. 197: Grant Gambrall, UI, dec. (sudden death) James Nakashima, NU, 3-1. 285: Tucker Lane, NU, dec. Bobby Telford, UI, 4-1.

Contact the writer:

402-202-9766, sam.mckewon@owh.com

twitter.com/swmckewonOWH

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