For Terps, pins and wins aplenty

It's won three ACC titles in the past four years, finished three straight seasons ranked among the top 20 teams of the NCAA Division I Championships and finished last season 16-4 and 4-1 in the ACC.

But the Terrapins wrestling team is still hungry.

With seven of their 10 starters returning from last season, including All-Americans junior Josh Asper and sophomore Spencer Myers and NCAA qualifiers senior Kyle John and senior Corey Peltier, the Terps enter this season ranked by InterMat as tied for No. 9 with Illinois.

"On paper, we're pretty good," coach Kerry McCoy said. "Our expectations never change. We always go out in the hunt for an ACC title and try to be one of the top teams in the nation, and this year, we got the guys on the team to do it."

The Terps are already 3-0 this season after their Terrapin Duals matches with Johns Hopkins, Bloomsburg and Franklin & Marshall last Sunday. The team won 27 of its 30 total matches.

"Those were three big wins to start the season off the right way and we're very excited about it," said McCoy, who's in his fourth season as coach. "We just got to keep that momentum rolling."

Three starters graduated after last season — 133-pound Lou Ruland, 141-pound Jon Kohler and 174-pound Mike Letts — but McCoy's biggest obstacle isn't necessarily filling those positions, he said.

"We'll see who's going to step up, but it's not so much finding who's our No. 1 guy, but who's our Nos. 2 or 3," he said. "After that No. 1 guy, who's going to fill in? That's really important for us."

John, who weighs in at the 157-pound class, said the process for preparing for the season hasn't changed even as the team has set higher goals for itself than last year.

"We have a system down, and that system hasn't changed," said John, who is ranked as the No. 15 wrestler in the country, according to InterMat. "The ACC Championship is one of our goals, and we definitely want to go undefeated this year in dual meets and we want to place in the top five at NCAAs."

For a program that has long strived to crack the sport's elite crust, such goals may prove difficult. But, the 165-pound Asper said, given the team's dominance in its opening weekend, they might not seem so far-fetched.

"I think we can do it if everyone wrestles to their potential and we keep getting better throughout the year," said Asper, last year's ACC Wrestler of the Year, who finished with a team-best 35-5 record last season and ranked No. 3 by InterMat.

As he surveyed his team warming up before a practice this week, McCoy's enthusiasm for this season was obvious in his voice. He often came back to one word — "excited" — in describing his expectations for his Terps team.

And given the talent he has at his disposal, why not?

"I'm excited for what we have, what we've been building," McCoy said. "Our guys are doing it right, on and off the mat. We're excited about that, and we want to get as many people out as we can to showcase what we've been building and continue to build off of that."

egan@umdbk.com