John Carroll flirted with perfection in their first tournament of the 2018-19 wrestling season, points away from victories across the board.  

In the end, the Blue Streaks would complete the second annual competition in Michigan with a third place showing out of 12 teams. But the promise was shown.

Results

Both Andrew Perelka and Jarrod Brezovec started their campaigns undefeated, each with four wins at Adrian.  Perelka earned two pins on his way to the championship match. He won the final in sound fashion, handling Ray Porter from Lourdes University by major decision of 19-7 in the 125 lb. class.  

Brezovec clinched first prize for the second time in the Invitational's two year history. After beating out teammate Ian McKenna in the semifinal match, Brezovec raced away from Mount Union's David Massey in an 8-3 Decision.

Four Blue Streak competitors lost in the championship matches despite valiant efforts, three of whom were competing for the first time for JCU.  

Sophomore Spencer Dusi, in his first official matches for the Gold and Blue, went 3-1 and finished second in the 133 lb division.  

Starting off his junior campaign aggressively was Danny Novak. Before dropping the final match to Adrian's Dylan Steward, Novak had four straight wins, just three shy of his season total last year.  

Northwestern transfer Sam Gross won three matches to get to the finals were he lost by one point, a 5-4 decision to Noah Clary of Lourdes.

Freshman Luca Santillo followed a similar fate to Gross, winning his first three matches before surrendering the 285 lb. championship to Max Bishop of Wabash.

For a third place finish, Ian McKenna showed he's the real deal.  The freshman out of NY went 5-1 on the day, losing only to his brother-in-uniform Brezovec in the semifinal match.  McKenna accumulated four pins in less than 15 minutes of action, winning the third place crown by way of a 8-0 Major Decision.  

In the 165 lb. division, Seth Winkle (4-1) took bronze as well. One of those wins came through a forfeit from teammate Luke Reicosky, a strategic team decision to give both wrestlers a break before their final matches.  Reicosky (5-2) went on to take the 5th place match coincidentally by forfeit.

Jarrad Lasko (6-2) certainly will sleep easy tonight having wrestled in eight matches.  After a loss in his second match, the road ahead would be a long one. He went on to win his third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh match of the day before losing by one point in the third place match.  Lasko's 57 points were the fourth best in the tournament and the most scored by a John Carroll competitor.

Shane Ging (3-2) achieved a fall before the end of the first period in final match, taking home seventh place.  In the match prior, Ging also won by way of a fall at 1:41.

Freshman Josh Stasek's .500 performance (3-3) put points on the board for the Blue Streaks.  Stasek, a freshman could continue to battle other freshman Luca Santillo for the starting spot at 285 after garnering all three wins through pins in 6:50.

While not reaching the leaderboard in total points, freshman Kyle Murray demonstrated his prowess in another capacity: points in a single match.  Securing 22 single match points, he scored the second most points in the entire tournament, bettered only by the 174 lb champion Noah Clary of Lourdes (27 points.)  In eight matches, seven Blue Streak wrestlers tallied more than 18 points.

Wabash won the team title with 170 points, while the OAC took the second, third and fourth spots in the Adrian Invitational -- Mount Union (169), John Carroll (159), and Heidelberg (94), respectively.  

John Carroll's next event will take place on Sunday, November 11th at the Ohio Intercollegiate Open in Cleveland, OH