Dieringer is good... Really REALLY good.

Alex Dieringer is a two time NCAA Champion, and is headed into his Senior season, where he will enter as not only the number 1 wrestler in his weight class, but the preseason favorite to win the Hodge trophy. He didn't win the coveted trophy last year, as there was a gentleman by the name of L. Stieber, who happened to win his 4th NCAA championship. Turns out, you only get 4 tries, so that's rather impressive.

What Dieringer did last year though, needs to be talked about more. People have had undefeated seasons before (Stieber only had one by the way, and a dirty little secret, Metcalf never had an undefeated season), but the fashion that he did it in is way more impressive than anything that we've seen in quite some time. Let's elaborate a little bit. 34-0 is an impressive feat for anyone, but 29 of those wins were Major decisions or more, not to mention he beat Taylor Walsh in the NCAA finals by 7 points, one point away from a major decision. Getting a little more detailed, 15 of those 29 bonus point wins were either pins or tech falls... More than half of his bonus point victories were either ended prematurely because he scored too many points, or because his opponent couldn't stay off his back. 

Sorry Nestor Taffur, you aren't the only one to get caught up by @ringring57. Okay, lets dig a little deeper. Maybe he just got lucky and wrestled an easy schedule this year. Nope, Dieringer won matches against 5 of the other All Americans either at NCAA's or through the course of the season. More specifically, he destroyed them. He beat Taylor Walsh (2nd, 14-7), Bo Jordan (3rd, 6-1, this was his closest match of the year), Jackson Morse (4th, 18-6), Nick Sulzer (5th, ranked 2nd most of the year, 8-2), Ethan Ramos (6th, 17-6), and Michael Moreno (Round of 12, and overrated as a top 5 guy most of the year, 14-4 and 13-3). So just to be clear, the closest match that he had this year was a 5 point win in the NCAA Semi Finals. Terrifyingly enough, he went on a tear from January 11th 2015 when he only pinned or majored everyone through that semi finals match against Bo on March 21st. He went more than 3 where he had 6 pins and 10 major decisions, including a win over the wrestler who placed 4th 18-6! He's a point scoring, offensive minded scoring machine. It's one thing to have someone with the talent, but it's another thing to have someone with the ability and mentality to wrestle as hard as they can for all 6 minutes (or often time less) of the match. 

If you have made it this far, chances are you are familiar with Alex Dieringer, and his reign of terror. For 165lbers of the world, it essentially looks like they will be wrestling for the chance to place 2nd. Sure, when you have a seasons like this, the competition seems to find a way to raise it's game and level the playing field to an extent. However, I think this guy is driven enough to continue making improvements, and I believe he isn't even close to achieving all of his goals. We talk about Burroughs, Dake, Taylor, Howe, and all of the competition we have at 74kg's, but I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest to see Dieringer as our representative in 2020.