Arizona State University’s wrestling team secured a 31-9 win over Cal Baptist in a Big 12 matchup at Desert Financial Arena on Friday night. The Sun Devils overcame an early deficit after losing the first two bouts, then won eight consecutive matches to close out the dual.
Kaleb Larkin, a redshirt sophomore competing at 157 pounds, started the comeback with a 6-0 decision. This victory sparked the team’s momentum, which continued with technical-fall wins from Nicco Ruiz (165 pounds), Cael Valencia (174 pounds), and Shay Addison (184 pounds). These three technical falls contributed significantly to Arizona State’s total points.
Freshman Kyler Larkin returned to the lineup for the first time since mid-January and earned a 7-2 win at 133 pounds, improving his season record to 15-1. Additional victories came from Colton Hawks (197 pounds), David Szuba (heavyweight), and An’ee Vigil (125 pounds).
This match marks Arizona State’s second win over Cal Baptist in their all-time series. It is likely their final meeting following Cal Baptist’s announcement that it will discontinue its wrestling program after the current season.
Head Coach Zeke Jones commented on the team’s performance: “We got a win, so that was good. There were definitely some takeaways. I was not happy with how we started. Pierson wrestled a really good match and made one mistake, and that’s the thing in wrestling. Unlike other sports, there’s one move that can end a match.. There’s no touchdown or basket that ends a basketball or football game. That’s one of the beautiful things of our sport, but also one of the challenges,[that] you can get pinned. So that was a bummer for Pierson (Manville), and then Nicco (Ruiz) got caught on his back, and we had to go to the team and say, “You guys need to wake up.” Then after that, I think we got on a roll, and at the end of the day, we’re wrestling as well as we have all year, and I think it’s showing up at the right time.”
Jones also spoke about maintaining momentum within the team: “You always hand off energy from one teammate to another. That’s what all great teams do. You get momentum and you hand it to your teammates. Michael Jordan used to talk about when his team lost momentum that he felt it was on him to be the guy to get the momentum back. I think that’s how Kaleb (Larkin) came up, then Nicco, then Cael (Valencia), and then Shay (Addison). You could see the energy rise, and we just handed it off because they knew that’s the responsibility of a team that gets its hand raised.”
Nicco Ruiz reflected on coming back after initial losses: “It’s an amazing feeling. Personally, I didn’t start off that well and it didn’t feel good. But we came back, we thought about what was going on, and went back to our game plan. Now we’re doing pretty good, and I’d like to keep that going. It feels really good because a lot of our team is like that too. It’s great because we’re just leading up to the Big 12s and the NCAAs this next month, so it’s a great run right now.”
He added thoughts about personal improvement: “What I really took away was all the moves I hit, all the things I could do, all the stuff I know – like getting my conditioning up. For us, I think of every match as another practice match. I’m going to go out there and try to do all my stuff. It helps me just look at [what is working in a match]. It helps me grow so much.”
The Sun Devils are scheduled for their final dual meet of the season against Lehigh on Saturday, February 21 at Desert Financial Arena.