Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
WVU's Adams Chasing History As Championship Season Begins
March 05, 2020 02:22 PM | Wrestling
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia University's Noah Adams will be chasing some history when the NCAA Wrestling Championships begin later this month in Minneapolis.
You can count on two hands the number of West Virginia natives to earn All-America honors in the sport, and you only need one hand to cover the Mountaineers.
Wheeling's Jimmie Cox did it in 1929, Williamstown's Mike Mason duplicated the feat 68 years later in 1997 and again in 1998, Elkins' Sam Kline did it in 1999 and Parkersburg's Brandon Rader earned All-America honors in 2006 and 2007.
Beyond WVU, you are looking at Huntington's Ken Chertow at Penn State, Charleston's Mark Samples at Edinboro and Parkersburg's Jared Haught at Virginia Tech.
That's it.
Coal City's Noah Adams, once an Independence High standout for coach Jeremy Hart and today the nation's second-ranked 197-pounder heading into this weekend's Big 12 Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma, could very well be the next one.
West Virginia's Tim Flynn, who observed Samples reach the podium in 1999 when he finished seventh at NCAAs, believes Adams has what it takes to get to the podium this year as well.
"He's a homegrown guy, a humble guy, a hard worker and right now he's turning into the whole package, and that's what we need," Flynn said recently.
These last two years at West Virginia have tested the patience of Flynn, whose wrestling teams posted eight top-15, five top-10 and a pair of top-five finishes at the NCAA championships during his 21 seasons at Edinboro.
He's used to having a small bus full of NCAA qualifiers and multiple guys reaching the podium, something that hasn't happened around here since the Craig Turnbull days more than a decade ago.
West Virginia finished this season with a 4-12 dual-match record, which is slightly better than last year's 4-14 mark only because the Mountaineers wrestled two fewer matches. But Flynn understood what he was getting himself into here two years ago when he left a pretty good thing up at Edinboro, and he can see better days ahead for the Mountaineers.
"We don't have that iron sharpening iron very much right now, and we need it," Flynn stated. "We have a good recruiting class coming in and, hopefully, we can get some decent walk-ons to go with them. Then, pretty soon the pedigree of the room raises up and that will raise Noah's level.
"People want to go where they're having success, and that was strike one for us – we weren't, and we aren't yet," he added. "Then, they want to go where the kids and the culture are where you want yourself to be, and we didn't have that either."
So, who better than a guy named Noah to help lead West Virginia University wrestling into calmer waters?
He's already won all 29 of his regular-season matches, the first WVU guy to do that since three-time NCAA champion Greg Jones finished the 2005 regular season unblemished.
That alone raises eyebrows.
Adams tied NC State 157-pounder Hayden Hidlay as the NCAA's ninth-most dominant wrestler this year by accounting for 4.07 points per match, the most of any 197-pounder this year. And, he's tallied 11 victories over ranked opponents including eight out of his last 10 matches heading into Big 12s.
To win Big 12s, he's going to have to beat 16th-ranked Jake Woodley of Oklahoma and 17th-ranked Dakota Geer of Oklahoma State, among others.
Then, when he gets out to Minneapolis, he's likely going to face Ohio State's Kollin Moore, undefeated this year at 24-0 and sporting a 107-11 record heading into this weekend's Big Ten Championships in Piscataway, New Jersey.
But according to Flynn, the 197-pound weight class is wide open.
"The top guy (Moore) has been a step above in the past, but I think two through 25 are very similar," Flynn said. "Now, we're the second-ranked guy, but he's had some wars with some of these other guys so it's a deep weight class."
That means any little slip-up here or there is all that it is going to take to separate one through eight, and more importantly, eight and nine on the podium at NCAAs.
Adams got a small sampling of national tournament wrestling last year, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. He wasn't two-and-barbeque in Pittsburgh last March, but his stay in the Steel City wasn't an extended one either.
He dropped his opening match to NC State's Malik McDonald, won the first wrestle-back against 29th-ranked Brandon Whitman of North Carolina and then lost to Nebraska's Eric Schultz to conclude his abbreviated tournament run.
Noah took a week off to clear his mind and then spent the next couple of months literally living in the WVU Wrestling Pavilion.
By the end of last summer, he was a different dude, mentally and physically.
"Leaving NCAAs last year without being on the podium was disappointing to me, but at the same time I think I learned from it," he admitted. "I learned what I needed to do and I've always had that in the back of my head motivating me to keep me going when everything is hard."
"I think when you get to that stage and you don't have the success and you see some other guys have success that maybe you think you can beat, that bothers you," Flynn added.
Adams' single most important lesson from that experience was realizing that nothing replaces good, old-fashioned hard work because the wrestling gods simply won't allow it.
You take a workout or a match off and eventually it will come back and get you.
"He's improved a ton," Flynn said. "Everybody matures physically, but you can accelerate that with hard work."
And Adams has.
Noah has got the complete package as a wrestler, his speed and quickness on his feet making him a constant threat to take down his opponent. He's also much better on the mat because he's much stronger and in much better shape.
The technical tweaks Flynn have introduced to Noah's wrestling have been very minor.
"He's more sound," Flynn admitted. "It sounds funny, but it's just the basics such as keeping his level down. Last year, he was standing straight up and guys were getting in on his legs so we've fixed that.
"And he's making a real attempt to hold people down, which before he would just let people go," Flynn added.
Catch-and-release can get you a lot of points, for sure, but there is something about dominating your opponent on the mat. You only get one riding point for keeping a guy down, but the true value comes from breaking his spirit.
Having your head buried in the mat for three or four minutes has a way of taking the fight out of someone, which is something Flynn has encouraged Noah to add to his arsenal this year.
At any rate, the tournament season begins in Tulsa this weekend for Adams and the Mountaineers.
This is the time of year when champions are made.
"I'm going to be seeing some really good kids out there so I've just got to approach it like I did during the regular season and have the mentality that the work I've put in is going to show on the mat," Adams said.
The next step for Flynn's WVU wrestling program is to get more guys in the program on Noah Adams' level.
Adams sees it coming.
"I see the program right now kind of where I saw myself last year," he said. "We're in a tough conference. We're in the mix with some really good teams and we'll have a couple of close duals, but we're not quite there where we can beat them yet.
"We've got a lot of good, young guys. Caleb Rea (141-pounder from Weirton) is going to be solid," Adams said. "We've got a group of freshmen coming in next year that are going to be solid. I think the biggest thing is if they can transition well. Once we get guys in practice that will start butting heads the way we need them to in matches then I think we're going to be really good."
As for Kollin Moore, this year's other undefeated 197-pounder, Noah is aware of him but hasn't really put too much thought into wrestling him right now.
It's not a good idea to get too far ahead of yourself when it comes to tournament wrestling because your season can end at a snap of a finger.
"I've watched him wrestle before," Adams said. "He's wrestled kids I've wrestled and he's had a couple of good matches against them. But I'm not really worried about him right now. When the time comes I think I will be prepared."
If Adams can reach the podium out in Minneapolis later this month, it won't be the beginning of the end to Flynn's rebuilding job at WVU.
But it will certainly mark the end of the beginning.
"Where our program is we need guys," Flynn explained. "If you have none, it's hard to go out and say we're going to do it. You get one guy and he has some success you can point to it and say, 'Look, the system is in place. You can do it here.'
"So it's really important to us for him to have the season that he's having," Flynn concluded.
You can count on two hands the number of West Virginia natives to earn All-America honors in the sport, and you only need one hand to cover the Mountaineers.
Wheeling's Jimmie Cox did it in 1929, Williamstown's Mike Mason duplicated the feat 68 years later in 1997 and again in 1998, Elkins' Sam Kline did it in 1999 and Parkersburg's Brandon Rader earned All-America honors in 2006 and 2007.
Beyond WVU, you are looking at Huntington's Ken Chertow at Penn State, Charleston's Mark Samples at Edinboro and Parkersburg's Jared Haught at Virginia Tech.
That's it.
Coal City's Noah Adams, once an Independence High standout for coach Jeremy Hart and today the nation's second-ranked 197-pounder heading into this weekend's Big 12 Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma, could very well be the next one.
West Virginia's Tim Flynn, who observed Samples reach the podium in 1999 when he finished seventh at NCAAs, believes Adams has what it takes to get to the podium this year as well.
"He's a homegrown guy, a humble guy, a hard worker and right now he's turning into the whole package, and that's what we need," Flynn said recently.
These last two years at West Virginia have tested the patience of Flynn, whose wrestling teams posted eight top-15, five top-10 and a pair of top-five finishes at the NCAA championships during his 21 seasons at Edinboro.
He's used to having a small bus full of NCAA qualifiers and multiple guys reaching the podium, something that hasn't happened around here since the Craig Turnbull days more than a decade ago.
West Virginia finished this season with a 4-12 dual-match record, which is slightly better than last year's 4-14 mark only because the Mountaineers wrestled two fewer matches. But Flynn understood what he was getting himself into here two years ago when he left a pretty good thing up at Edinboro, and he can see better days ahead for the Mountaineers.
"We don't have that iron sharpening iron very much right now, and we need it," Flynn stated. "We have a good recruiting class coming in and, hopefully, we can get some decent walk-ons to go with them. Then, pretty soon the pedigree of the room raises up and that will raise Noah's level.
"People want to go where they're having success, and that was strike one for us – we weren't, and we aren't yet," he added. "Then, they want to go where the kids and the culture are where you want yourself to be, and we didn't have that either."
So, who better than a guy named Noah to help lead West Virginia University wrestling into calmer waters?
He's already won all 29 of his regular-season matches, the first WVU guy to do that since three-time NCAA champion Greg Jones finished the 2005 regular season unblemished.
That alone raises eyebrows.
Adams tied NC State 157-pounder Hayden Hidlay as the NCAA's ninth-most dominant wrestler this year by accounting for 4.07 points per match, the most of any 197-pounder this year. And, he's tallied 11 victories over ranked opponents including eight out of his last 10 matches heading into Big 12s.
To win Big 12s, he's going to have to beat 16th-ranked Jake Woodley of Oklahoma and 17th-ranked Dakota Geer of Oklahoma State, among others.
Then, when he gets out to Minneapolis, he's likely going to face Ohio State's Kollin Moore, undefeated this year at 24-0 and sporting a 107-11 record heading into this weekend's Big Ten Championships in Piscataway, New Jersey.
But according to Flynn, the 197-pound weight class is wide open.
"The top guy (Moore) has been a step above in the past, but I think two through 25 are very similar," Flynn said. "Now, we're the second-ranked guy, but he's had some wars with some of these other guys so it's a deep weight class."
That means any little slip-up here or there is all that it is going to take to separate one through eight, and more importantly, eight and nine on the podium at NCAAs.
Adams got a small sampling of national tournament wrestling last year, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. He wasn't two-and-barbeque in Pittsburgh last March, but his stay in the Steel City wasn't an extended one either.
He dropped his opening match to NC State's Malik McDonald, won the first wrestle-back against 29th-ranked Brandon Whitman of North Carolina and then lost to Nebraska's Eric Schultz to conclude his abbreviated tournament run.
Noah took a week off to clear his mind and then spent the next couple of months literally living in the WVU Wrestling Pavilion.
By the end of last summer, he was a different dude, mentally and physically.
"Leaving NCAAs last year without being on the podium was disappointing to me, but at the same time I think I learned from it," he admitted. "I learned what I needed to do and I've always had that in the back of my head motivating me to keep me going when everything is hard."
"I think when you get to that stage and you don't have the success and you see some other guys have success that maybe you think you can beat, that bothers you," Flynn added.
Adams' single most important lesson from that experience was realizing that nothing replaces good, old-fashioned hard work because the wrestling gods simply won't allow it.You take a workout or a match off and eventually it will come back and get you.
"He's improved a ton," Flynn said. "Everybody matures physically, but you can accelerate that with hard work."
And Adams has.
Noah has got the complete package as a wrestler, his speed and quickness on his feet making him a constant threat to take down his opponent. He's also much better on the mat because he's much stronger and in much better shape.
The technical tweaks Flynn have introduced to Noah's wrestling have been very minor.
"He's more sound," Flynn admitted. "It sounds funny, but it's just the basics such as keeping his level down. Last year, he was standing straight up and guys were getting in on his legs so we've fixed that.
"And he's making a real attempt to hold people down, which before he would just let people go," Flynn added.
Catch-and-release can get you a lot of points, for sure, but there is something about dominating your opponent on the mat. You only get one riding point for keeping a guy down, but the true value comes from breaking his spirit.
Having your head buried in the mat for three or four minutes has a way of taking the fight out of someone, which is something Flynn has encouraged Noah to add to his arsenal this year.
At any rate, the tournament season begins in Tulsa this weekend for Adams and the Mountaineers.
This is the time of year when champions are made.
"I'm going to be seeing some really good kids out there so I've just got to approach it like I did during the regular season and have the mentality that the work I've put in is going to show on the mat," Adams said.
The next step for Flynn's WVU wrestling program is to get more guys in the program on Noah Adams' level.
Adams sees it coming.
"I see the program right now kind of where I saw myself last year," he said. "We're in a tough conference. We're in the mix with some really good teams and we'll have a couple of close duals, but we're not quite there where we can beat them yet.
"We've got a lot of good, young guys. Caleb Rea (141-pounder from Weirton) is going to be solid," Adams said. "We've got a group of freshmen coming in next year that are going to be solid. I think the biggest thing is if they can transition well. Once we get guys in practice that will start butting heads the way we need them to in matches then I think we're going to be really good."
As for Kollin Moore, this year's other undefeated 197-pounder, Noah is aware of him but hasn't really put too much thought into wrestling him right now.
It's not a good idea to get too far ahead of yourself when it comes to tournament wrestling because your season can end at a snap of a finger.
"I've watched him wrestle before," Adams said. "He's wrestled kids I've wrestled and he's had a couple of good matches against them. But I'm not really worried about him right now. When the time comes I think I will be prepared."
If Adams can reach the podium out in Minneapolis later this month, it won't be the beginning of the end to Flynn's rebuilding job at WVU.
But it will certainly mark the end of the beginning.
"Where our program is we need guys," Flynn explained. "If you have none, it's hard to go out and say we're going to do it. You get one guy and he has some success you can point to it and say, 'Look, the system is in place. You can do it here.'
"So it's really important to us for him to have the season that he's having," Flynn concluded.
Players Mentioned
/ Wrestling
/ Wrestling
WRES: Oklahoma State Hype Video
Saturday, December 13
WVU Wrestling Pavilion 2025 Update
Monday, December 08
WRES: Rider Recap
Wednesday, November 26
WRES: Mountaineer Quad Recap
Wednesday, November 19
