South Dakota State wrestling took a pair of victories over the United States Air Force Academy on Friday and the University of Northern Colorado on Sunday as they look ahead to a ranked match this weekend.
AIR FORCE
Daniel Guanajuato at 125 pounds took a 10-1 major decision against NCAA Qualifier Tucker Owens to open the match. Following Cale Seaton’s 5-4 decision, the Falcons scored their only dual win with Carter Nigel over Tyson Peach. The Jacks won the last seven duals to take the match by a score of 37-5.
SDSU won three of these duals by tech falls, including a 20-5 tech fall by Moses Espinoza-Owens at 174 pounds, and a 16-0 shutout tech fall by Luke Rasmussen at 285 pounds. Cael Swensen racked his first pin of the 2025-26 season.
Northern Colorado
The Bears put up three dual wins in Sunday’s match against SDSU, but the Jacks won the final four duals of the day in the 31-10 win. The first three duals were won on major decisions with Guanajuato and Peach winning two of them for SDSU. Dominick Serrano for the Bears won the other dual over Seaton. Bennett Berge at 197 pounds won his dual on a 3:42 pin, while Rasmussen won on a 2:26 pin.
KJ Evans at 149 pounds and Kilian Schultz at 165 pounds accounted for the remaining Bears dual wins.
Both match wins improve the Jacks record to 12-3.
“I thought overall, you know, the fight is there,” head coach Damion Hahn said. “The fight is there, right? The effort is there. The competition in me wants more every single time.”
NO. 14 NORTHERN IOWA
This Sunday sees the Jacks hosting the University of Northern Iowa. The Panthers are 9-6 this season, but they have lost their last two matches and are 0-3 on the road. In their last match on Saturday, the Panthers lost to No. 21 Oklahoma 23-18.
SDSU and UNI faced off earlier this season on Jan. 10 in Cedar Falls, Iowa, during the NWCA National Duals. The Panthers won the match 20-14, and the Jacks finished in second place in what was their first loss of the season.
Garret Rinken at 133 pounds leads the Panthers in overall win percentage this season at .818. The redshirt sophomore is 5-0 in tech falls and 4-0 in pins. His quickest pin time clocked in at 2:18. The quickest time belongs to heavyweight Cameron Geuther, who recorded one in just 48 seconds. The next quickest pin time came from Cory Land at 141 pounds, who recorded a 1:17 pin. Land, a redshirt junior, is 12-3 this season and 7-3 in duals, also going 4-0 in major decisions. In total, five Panthers have pin times inside two minutes.
“UNI is very similar to us,” Hahn said. “We took a loss, they took a loss, we’ll see how that kind of shakes out.”
Match time is Sunday at 1 p.m. and will be streamed on FloWrestling.
