Layne Malczewski draws Rutgers' Brian Soldano in first round of NCAA Wrestling Tournament

Michigan State 184 pounder Layne Malczewski gets a rematch with Rutgers freshman Brian Soldano in the first round of the NCAA Wrestling Tournament.

Malczewski (seeded No. 15) took down Soldano (seeded No. 18) 16-6 when the team’s squared off in a dual back in January after Soldano built a quick 6-0 lead. In a wild affair, both wrestlers were caught on their backs and Rutgers head coach Scott Goodale expects more of the same Thursday morning.

Ahead of the NCAA Tournament, Goodale talked about how Soldano should approach the rematch against the Michigan State Spartan.

“I expect there to be back points scored,” Goodale said. “Somebody’s gonna score back points. Hopefully we can minimize that. Here’s the deal, we got to be able to get off the bottom right? We know legs are coming (from Malczewski). We got to be able to get off the bottom. We got to be real smart with what we’re doing based on match tactics, do we even go down there? But Brian’s gonna roll around, Malczewski is gonna roll around, somebody’s gonna get caught on their back. We have to minimize the mistakes and we’re gonna have to wrestle really, really hard.”

Malczewski is 23-4 this season and is a four-time NCAA qualifier, but has yet to make it to the All-American podium. Prior to the Big Ten Tournament, Malczewski won six matches in a row and nine of 11 matches throughout the dual meet season.

Out of his 23 wins, Malczewski has 12 pins.

“If we put (Malczewski) on his back, we got to stick him and that’s kind of what we’re looking for,” Goodale said. “I don’t think it’s gonna be ‘go out there and look for a home run.’ But listen, this is the way both those guys wrestle here. We know Layne is going to try to get to his low single. Brian understands that we got to protect our legs, make it really, really difficult for him to score and like I said, there’ll be some points scored here and we just got to score one more point than him.”

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As a freshman, Soldano is 23-10 and has 10 pins on the year. Safe to say, like Goodale said, someone is going to their back Thursday morning when the tournament begins.