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Hokie2000x OP
Apr 12, 2026 at 11:54 AM ET
My Take - Coaching Staff Changes
Tanelli is a defensive technician and it was obvious watching our lower weights outside of Seidel that our lower weights were really struggling with offensive wrestling. Bringing in James Green is a great move but his strength is in the middle weights, he wrestled primarily at 157 at Nebraska and has competed anywhere from 65kg to 74 kg in freestyle (143 to 163 lbs). There has been noise around Yianni but he is another 141 - 157 guy across his folk/free career. Latest rumors indicate Yianni is going to stay home and join the Cornell staff. At a minimum, our 4th coach should be an upper weight specialist to replace Haught. Unless there is an alternative strategy and we are bringing in a resident athlete to SERTC that can fill that role but a Yianni/Green combination does not make sense for the team moving forward.

5 Replies

T
TheFacts
3mo
Ty is coming back as the 4th coach.
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ChEHokie78
3mo
Speculation or fact? Would love to see Ty come back
D
dallasvt
3mo
Look at the poster name.
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Hikinghokie
3mo
Yianni isn't coming here
I honestly like Green as a hire more. I did not think we would realistically pull him from his alma mater, but he'll be a fantastic resource here. As far as Tanelli goes, I don't have any kind of scoop, but this doesn't feel like a performance related firing. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the staff fills out. We obviously need an upperweights coach to replace Haught, but it was also mentioned that we were creating another position similar to Latona's, and per Frayer, that we were going to go after an RTC athlete. This is turning into a pretty intriguing offseason.
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donjfs3
3mo
Green is much more proven than Yianni.
Tanelli definitely didn't seem performance related. Nobody has explicitly said it but it's been implied by people who would know. Regarding the lower weights getting another training partner is a big reason we pushed for Garcia.