By Lori Shontz
Of the Post-Dispatch
Over the past several seasons, the West Virginia coaching staff has engaged in a rather bizarre offseason ritual. Coach Craig Turnbull and assistant coach Zeke Jones sat in the wrestling office, pored over a list of tournaments and brainstormed a way to schedule a match that their 184-pound wrestler would lose.
Seriously.
It’s not easy. Not when the wrestler in question is senior Greg Jones, who enters tonight’s 184-pound final against Tyler Baier of Cornell at the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championship at Savvis Center with the following qualifications:
A 50-match winning streak.
Two previous NCAA titles.
A total of 10 takedowns scored against him. In four seasons.
And more than 400 takedowns scored.
“Our goal his whole college career is to find somebody to beat him, “Zeke Jones said.
There’s a method to the coaches’ madness – to relieve Jones of the heavy burden of an undefeated season.
The only thing keeping Greg Jones from being mentioned in the same breath as four-time NCAA champions Pat Smith and Cael Sanderson is his performance as a sophomore at the 2003 NCAA tournament. He entered the tournament with a 46-match winning streak, got upset in the first round and failed to earn All-America status.
The experience, however, has turned him into an even more dominant wrestler because it taught him an important lesson.
“It really made me appreciate what I was doing a lot more, “Jones said. “And it kind of reminded me to have fun with the sport, to really just enjoy it and go out there to score points. “
And it drove home a point that Zeke Jones lives by – preparing simply to win is not necessarily the best strategy.
“If you come to the national tournament just to win, you’ll lose, “he said. “If you come to the national tournament to dominate in the pursuit of excellence, then you wrestle your best. “
Greg Jones was born into the sport. His father, Vertus, coached his three sons and a handful of other neighborhood kids in the family basement, which was covered with mats. As many as 15 kids rolled around in a space Greg describes like this: “It wasn’t very big, but it was hot. “
Vertus was strict, and he expected his sons to work hard. Greg doesn’t even remember deciding to dedicate himself to the sport. “By the time I was old enough to make a decision it was something that was just natural for me to do, “he said.
After winning one Pennsylvania state title, Greg went to West Virginia, following in the footsteps of his big brother, Vertus Jr., a three-time All-American for the Mountaineers. He arrived with the goal of winning an NCAA title someday, and he excelled immediately, winning the 174-pound title as a freshman.
When Greg Jones looks back, the moment that stands out from that tournament isn’t the match itself, but a comment that Zeke Jones made as he offered congratulations. “The only thing better than being national champ is winning it two, three or four times, “Zeke told him.
So Greg Jones figured he needed to reconfigure his goals. “I thought a national championship was a high goal for myself, “he said. “Apparently, I didn’t set my goal high enough. “
So for an encore, Jones sailed through his sophomore season without a loss. Then came the disappointment of the NCAA tournament, which brought about the coaching staff’s new goal. They sent him to the Sunkist Open in the offseason, and he lost to Lee Fullhart, one of the United States’ top-ranked freestyle wrestlers.
“He really got a lot of bricks lifted off, “Zeke Jones said. “And he realized, ‘This means I’ve got to get to work.’ “
To say that a wrestler works hard means little; national-class wrestlers live their sport. But Greg Jones dedicated himself so totally to conditioning and perfecting technique that he has made himself look even quicker than he really is.
He’s so quick that when Zeke Jones needs an example of a quick wrestler, he bypasses world and Olympic champions in favor of Greg, who once took down an opponent so hard and so quickly that the opponent’s shoes stayed on the mat.
Despite his undefeated season, it hasn’t been all easy for Greg. Both of his grandfathers died during the season, a week apart, and he was injured during the season, too.
Plus, he is working toward higher goals.
“He’s knows that because he’s really the greatest wrestler here, that doesn’t mean he’s the best wrestler in the world, “Zeke Jones said. “Although he’s at a high level, he’s not at the highest level. So it’s humbling for him because he realizes that he’s here, but he wants to get there.”
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