How Pat Popolizio built NC State wrestling into a powerhouse, Part II

Pat Popolizio’s NC State wrestling program was starting to gain real attention following a 16th-place finish at the 2015 NCAA Championships.

Redshirt junior heavyweight Nick Gwiazdowski not only joined elite company as a two-time national champion, but true freshman Kevin Jack came out of nowhere to beat a pair of top-five seeds and avenge earlier losses en route to a fifth-place showing.

Heading into the 2016 season, the wrestling world was now paying attention to the Wolfpack, but nobody viewed them as an emerging national powerhouse. Not yet.

Their 16-6 season and 16th place finish was impressive, but they still finished sixth at the ACC Championships and lost to Duke in the regular season. The upstart program everybody in the sport was talking about was ACC rival Virginia Tech, which blew the Wolfpack out 29-9 the previous February.

Part I of How Pat Popolizio built NC State wrestling into a powerhouse

Building confidence

In addition to a pair of returning All-Americans, Popolizio was set to return fifth-year senior Tommy Gantt, who had just a 15-15 record as a freshman under the previous coaching staff. He had developed into one of the country’s best 157-pounders and posted a 35-10 record in the 2013-14 season before a late-career redshirt.

During the 2015-16 preseason, Popolizio noticed something special about his team.

“It’s hard to see that if you haven’t come close to it before, but I think the biggest thing was when those guys came to a workout, they weren’t training to be 25th in the country,” Popolizio said. “The commitment was there. The guys didn’t question the training. They went out and earned the right to win.”

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And the coach built up each of his wrestlers’ confidence. One example is Gantt, who 10 years later, still has a picture on his phone that Popolizio once texted him. It shows Gantt working out in the NC State wrestling room. Underneath the photo are the words: “Who is training to be the next NCAA champion?”

Gantt admitted “it’s a fact” that his coach believed he could achieve great heights before Gantt did. Special things happened once Gantt got on board.

“I didn’t start to believe it until I lost in the round of 12 [at the 2014 NCAA Championships] … and I thought, I’m right there with all those guys,” he said. “Those gears started to turn in my head, and I’m like, ‘Man, maybe what he’s saying … he’s got to be seeing something.’

“He was seeing something I couldn’t see. That helped push me to where I got to be, having that faith and building that faith in me.”

Making a statement

Low expectations from the outside wouldn’t last long.

On the season’s opening weekend, the Pack beat Minnesota, 39-3. NC State topped the traditional wrestling powerhouse in nine of 10 matches.

“After that dual meet, I went back and looked, and Minnesota hadn’t lost like that in years — and I know they weren’t happy about it,” Popolizio recalled. “We were definitely under the radar, and they probably weren’t ready for us. We had a lot of no-name guys, but not after that weekend.

“The momentum started building, little by little. Teams that were beating up on us, we reversed those results — and a lot of them were in the ACC. We went years without being able to beat a lot of these teams, but these guys were sick of losing and pissed off about it.”

If the Pack didn’t have the wrestling world’s attention with the win over Minnesota, they would about a month later, when they won 19-15 at Oklahoma State, Popolizio’s alma mater. The 36-time national champions are a certified powerhouse, arguably one of the greatest programs in any NCAA sport’s history.

Beating Minnesota was one thing. Going to one of the sport’s most historic venues and topping the Cowboys was unimaginable. Except for those on the team, who weren’t looking past Oklahoma State by any means but were focused on making a statement on the sport’s biggest stages, including the NCAA Championships.

“As a team, we had to believe that we could bring a team trophy home,” Jack said. “The coaches could push and believe as much as they want, but at the end of the day, you have to go out and compete. … We knew we were all going for the same thing.”

There was no mistaking the team’s confidence started at the top.

”He’s basically the same every match. He expects to win,” Jack said of Popolizio. “Whether it sounds crazy or not, he never goes into a match hoping. That pushes us forward, knowing that he has that confidence in each of us.”

“I guess you would say we kind of shocked those dudes, but we knew what was going to happen,” Gantt said. “Pat was on us the whole week. He just gave us that mental push.”

Continuing to climb

The Pack stayed undefeated and rolled through several other ranked foes — No. 24 Old Dominion, No. 17 Virginia, No. 14 North Carolina, No. 16 Pitt and No. 11 Nebraska.  

It all led to an ACC showdown on the final weekend of the season with No. 8 Virginia Tech on a Friday night and No. 5 Missouri two days later. Reynolds Coliseum was being renovated, so a tiny auxiliary building on the state fairgrounds, the Holshouser building, was transformed into the burgeoning powerhouse’s lair.

Thanks to the impressive early season wins, NC State wrestling became a hot ticket. When the ACC powerhouse Hokies came to town, Popolizio and his team arrived to see hundreds lined up to get in the building for what wound up to be a standing room-only crowd.

However, the steps aren’t always in the right direction when building a powerhouse. The Wolfpack fell, 19-14. But that proved to be the exception, and the team did not lose again. They beat No. 5 Missouri in front of another packed house at Holshouser, then went on the road to defeat No. 2 Iowa in the National Duals, taking on the sport’s “other” traditional power in another hallowed venue.

“I bet if Pat told our AD when he first came in that in four years we’re going to beat Oklahoma State, we’re going to beat Iowa — both away — they probably would have looked at him like he had five heads,” Jack said. “That definitely put us on the map as a program. We had a couple All-Americans, but I think that really showed people, NC State’s an actual team now.”

“It’s not easy to go and beat Oklahoma State or Iowa any year. Being able to do that in the same year really pushed us forward as a program and in recruiting. When you win matches like that people want to be a part of it, especially with a team that’s never done it before. We started bringing in top-five, top-three classes.”

‘You can’t write that type of story’

Gwiazdowski, who took the lessons learned from Popolizio to go on and wrestle for the U.S. national team that won the team world championship, was asked what made that NC State squad so special.

After an 11-second pause, a man who is never at a loss for words said: “Guys had finally bought into Pat’s framework. It was finally guys that were like, ‘This is what I want to do, this is who I want to do it for, sign me up.’

“It was a culmination of work put in and the things that Pat was preaching for a while. Things that he’d say, and we’d go home and make fun of him for because he sounded so outlandish. … It’s been his vision, and there have been a lot of people that tried to get in the way, but he’s a persistent, stubborn guy.

“Everybody was on board. That was the first time there was 100 percent buy-in from everyone.”

The results were unthinkable only a few years, maybe months, before.

“Those were really fun, special teams and moments,” Gwiazdowski said. “When you think of it, it had never been done. It was an ACC team beating those teams, but it was beating those teams at their places. That’s the two best programs of all time — which is not easy to do, given the history alone.

“The tradition was heavy, that’s something you wrestle with, that logo on your singlet. At that time, the Wolfpack was pee-wee stuff to the Cowboys and Hawkeyes. That was the moment where we broke through and people realized, ‘Whoa, these guys are for real.’

“I guess when you’re part of it, it’s not that big of a deal. … I’ve never once been like, ‘Wow, this is momentous; this is something that will stand out.’ As a competitor, I accomplish things and am like, ‘Sweet, but what’s next?’

“But when I look back at what we did with those teams, it’s pretty cool. At the time, it didn’t feel incredible. But when you stand back and look at it now, that’s pretty impressive. You can’t write that type of story.”

It took a special set of circumstances for NC State to even have that opportunity, getting a team like Oklahoma State on the schedule and then drawing Iowa in the National Duals. And they certainly took advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime chance.

“Half of the coaches aren’t stupid enough to schedule [teams that have a chance of beating them],” Gwiazdowski explained. “When you feel your team is at its best, other people won’t schedule you — they won’t do it then.

“You’ve got to beat them when you’re the underdog. You’ve got to do it when they think ‘This team’s not that good, we’ll polish them off.’ … Then it changes.”

Filling the trophy case

Though NC State, which went 23-1 during the 2015-16 season, underperformed with an 11th-place finish at the NCAA Championships, they did win their first ACC title under Popolizio and signed the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class (four are still around as this year’s super seniors — Hayden Hidlay, Tariq Wilson, Nick Reenan and Thomas Bullard).

Historic accomplishments have followed the highly ranked recruiting classes Popolizio has inked nearly every cycle since.

The Wolfpack currently boasts a streak of seven straight top-20 NCAA finishes, a school record. It has won three consecutive ACC titles. Starting with that special 2016 dual season, it has gone 99-10 over the last seven years — no wrestling team in the country has more wins during that time.

Popolizio has coached nine All-Americans in the last three NCAA Championships alone — NC State had four in the 20 years prior to his hiring.

His Wolfpack pupils have appeared in a total of six NCAA championship matches — the program, in its entire history, had six different finalists pre-Popolizio.

Of course, the top-line accomplishment is still that fourth-place NCAA team trophy that is commemorated multiple times throughout the head man’s office.

“That’s just the symbol of a lot of work, a lot of time — not just me, but every coach and athlete,” Popolizio said. “A lot of work, sweat, tears and sacrifice.

“You don’t have a lot of things you can look at and say, this is what I do it for, and literally hold it in your hand. … But that’s one thing you can, and say it was worth it.”

The trophy was one of Popolizio’s two proudest accomplishments from his decade in Raleigh. On top of everything else, there were also personal reasons.

“That trophy’s always going to be something that’s unique and special,” he noted. “When you’re an athlete and you don’t accomplish your goals, you’ll always have regret. And that trophy has helped heal a lot of the hardship of not winning a national title as an athlete, not even being an All-American.

“You can always look at that and say we got it done as a team, which I think is sometimes harder to do than as an individual.”

Packing Reynolds Coliseum

The second accomplishment Popolizio is most proud of is immortalized on his office walls in a zoomed-out shot of a packed Reynolds Coliseum.

NC State is hosting North Carolina in a 2020 wrestling match, but it could be confused for the Heels’ men’s basketball team making its annual visit to the arena. And that photo can’t do justice to the atmosphere that was present at the match.

“When you get 4,500 people to a dual meet, that’s really powerful,” Popolizio said. “That’s a hard thing to do — to get people to buy in. That’s not just you and your team, that’s the community coming together. That’s one I had to get framed, it hangs there for a reason.

“I remember when we could wrestle a top-four team and get maybe 800 people to a match. It was like, ‘Why won’t people show up to this?’ We worked so hard, and then obviously winning helped a lot. That was a result of what the guys were doing, it was the perfect storm coming together.”

Popolizio was blown away by the support his program drew for the UNC match and the resulting atmosphere. It even impressed another former Oklahoma State standout, UNC head coach and Olympic bronze medalist Coleman Scott.

“Out of all the dual meets I’ve ever been a part of, it had as good of energy as any,” Popolizio said. “I’ve even talked to Coleman, and he said, ‘Reynolds was as loud as any arena I’ve ever been in, including when you got to Iowa and Oklahoma State.’

“It’s like the arena is built for college wrestling. In recruiting, people are like, ‘You get this many people to your matches? I want to come to NC State.’”

It’s another of the many once unheard of accomplishments reached under Popolizio, who hopes the attendance record set during that bout with the Tar Heels (4,383) is reset this weekend. It may happen twice.

Not done yet

So much has changed for NC State wrestling. But Popolizio won’t be satisfied until the highest finish in school history goes from a 4 to a 1.

Perhaps there’s no better indication of where the program currently sits than last year’s sixth-place NCAA finish, which “disappointed” the coach and his team.

“It looks good right now,” Popolizio said of the future. “We’ve got a lot of depth in the room. You’ve got to have a little bit of luck to get to the next level. We’re closing in on it, but a little bit of talent and luck have to meet up.

“I think the future is very bright as I analyze who we have in our room, who’s coming back and who’s coming in. It’s going to be very dangerous when all these guys develop.

“I’m excited for the next phase. Hopefully, at some point, it’s time to get a new practice facility. Something to match Reynolds would make this a very special place. That would be the total package.”

Popolizio will make the best of what he has to work with — just like he always has, something his former boss, Debbie Yow, saw in him long ago.

“Pat’s an overachiever,” she said. “It’s an intrinsic characteristic that has never changed, will never change. It drives him to figure out a way around any shortcomings.

“I don’t see how anybody could evaluate him any other way than being absolutely amazing with what he, his staff and his student-athletes have achieved.”

The ultimate destination

No fewer than eight of Popolizio’s former Wolfpack wrestlers are coaching on the Division I level, not to mention countless others in the high school ranks.

There may be no better proof of what Popolizio is doing is working. He’s building not only successful wrestlers, but leaders. His coaching tree sprouts new branches every offseason.

This past summer, Popolizio’s highest-achieving pupil, Gwiazdowski, finally left his side, and became an assistant coach at Cornell in addition to continuing to compete. He’s not the only one looking to use his coach’s own tricks against him now.

“At this point, he’s competing against guys he’s trained,” Gwiazdowski said. “He’s got guys out there coaching, and not just myself. Other guys he produced that are taking his philosophies, mannerisms, his training methods and his intensity to other places and sharing it.

“You can’t keep your trade secrets forever. But when you can beat guys using your trade secrets, and you’re the originator of them, that says something. I look at it in my own [wrestling] career, be careful what you teach guys because they’ll come back and beat you.

“Just being able to watch what’s happened at NC State is exciting. I would love to hoist a trophy like he did with my own team. I know the amount of work that goes into it; it’s not easy, especially when you think about the teams you’re beating, the individuals you’re beating, the coaches you’re beating.”

That just proves that when the game changes, Popolizio changes with it. The only thing that hasn’t — and won’t — is the ultimate destination: a team national championship.

“The hardest part now is moving up from fourth,” Jack admitted. “It’s hard to get where we got, but now it’s even harder to push forward and get third, get second, get first.

“Pat has never changed his perspective on what he wants, since his first year here through year 10. His goal has been the same. His culture has been the same. His rules have been the same. Everybody has the same goal. Everybody we bring in, we tell them what we’re going to do, and they buy into it.

“He doesn’t beat around the bush at all with that stuff. It might scare a lot of people — his culture, his rules — but the people that are part of it get to be part of something special.”