Mark Johnson won his first dual meet Sunday as the new wrestling coach at Illinois. The Fighting Illini (1-0) defeated Marquette 40-7 at Huff Hall in front of more than 800 spectators.
Johnson, 37, of Rock Island, is a former assistant to Iowa coach Dan Gable and was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team.
Johnson has two ranked wrestlers: 177-pound senior Mike Novak, ninth in the country with a 12-3 record, and 190-pound senior Jeff Monson, sixth in the nation at 9-4.
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Steve Marianetti, a 142-pounder from Northbrook, has the team`s best record at 14-3.
The Illini will be off for the holidays until Dec. 29-30, when they will compete in the Midlands tournament at Northwestern.
Wright on target: Wide receiver John Wright has been named to the first team on the Academic All-America team selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America. Wright, a senior from St. Joseph, Ill., carries a 4.70 grade-point average on a 5.0 scale in speech communication.
Women`s update: Freshman sensation Robbyn Preacely, a product of Morgan Park High School, leads the women`s basketball team with a 16.8 average after scoring 21 points Sunday in a 74-70 loss to Southern Illinois at Assembly Hall.
The Fighting Illini (3-2) play host to Cincinnati at noon Sunday, and everyone in attendance will be given a ticket for the men`s game against Mercer at 3 p.m.
The meeting with the Bearcats will be the women`s last action until they meet Detroit Mercy in the opener of the Lady Gator Classic on Dec. 29 in Gainesville, Fla.
One reason for Illinois` success has been senior point guard Jill Estey, whose 12-point average is nearly double her career mark. Estey has made seven three-pointers this season after hitting only eight in the previous three years. She`s averaging 6.8 assists and only 2.3 turnovers.
Deflected stat: Basketball statistics mavens, take note.
Princeton center Rick Hielscher, who starred at New Trier High School, was given credit for a basket in Saturday night`s game with Illinois when Deon Thomas deflected his pass into the basket defended by the Fighting Illini.
”Nobody had ever really seen that before,” Illinois sports information assistant Kent Brown said.
The ”shot” went down as a field-goal attempt and basket for Hielscher. But Brown checked the rulebook Sunday and learned that Hielscher shouldn`t have been awarded the points and that no field-goal attempt should have been counted. The rules say the points should simply be added to the team`s final score along with a footnote explaining how they`d been scored.