TEMPE – Sun Devil Wrestling handled business in a Big 12 matchup against Cal Baptist with a 31-9 victory on Friday night at Desert Financial Arena.
After dropping the first two bouts, Arizona State found itself in an early 9-0 hole. 157-pound redshirt sophomore Kaleb Larkin then provided his team with the spark it needed, as the Maroon and Gold went on to win eight straight unanswered bouts after Larkin’s 6-0 decision.
Redshirt sophomore No. 13 Nicco Ruiz (165 pounds), redshirt senior Cael Valencia (174 pounds) and redshirt junior Shay Addison (184 pounds) turned in three consecutive technical-fall victories to score 15 of the team's 31 total points.
Freshman Kyler Larkin (133 pounds) returned to the lineup for the first time since Jan. 15 vs Missouri (L, 22-17) and picked up right where he left off with a 7-2 victory to cap the squad's dominant night and move his season record to 15-1.
Graduate students Colton Hawks (197 pounds), David Szuba (HWT) and junior An’ee Vigil (125 pounds) each picked up wins of their own as well.
The Sun Devils now hold a 2-0 edge over the Lancers in the all-time series. The matchup likely marked the teams’ final meeting after Cal Baptist announced on Jan. 2, 2026, that it will discontinue its wrestling program at the conclusion of the 2025-26 season.
ASU (4-11, 2-7 Big 12) will be back in action on Saturday, Feb. 21 at 7:00 p.m. MST in the final dual of the season vs. Lehigh at Desert Financial Arena.
Full Results
ASU 31, CBU 9
125: An’ee Vigil MD 14-3 over Cooper Shore (CBU)
133: No. 5 Kyler Larkin Dec. 7-2 over No. 31 Remy Murillo (CBU)
141: Jesse Vasquez (CBU) F (3:12) over No. 20 Pierson Manville
149: Paul Kelly (CBU) MD 12-0 over Daniel Miranda
157: No. 5 Kaleb Larkin Dec. 6-0 over Draydon Morton (CBU)
165: No. 14 Nicco Ruiz TF (22-7 / 4:45) over Gabe Schumm (CBU)
174: Cael Valencia TF (21-5 / 5:58) over Tim Cowan (CBU)
184: Shay Addison TF (18-1 / 5:19) Adonis Bonar (CBU)
197: Colton Hawks Dec. 6-4 over Eli Sheeren (CBU)
HWT: David Szuba Dec. 5-2 over Tristan Kemp (CBU)
Notes
- The Sun Devils won eight or more consecutive bouts for the first time since Nov. 24, 2024 against Embry-Riddle (W, 48-5).
- Kaleb Larkin picked up his team-best 20th win of the season
- Kyler Larkin moves to 6-1 this season against ranked wrestlers. His only loss came via medical forfeit to Iowa State’s then-No.3 Evan Frost.
- Cael Valencia is now 12-1 against unranked wrestlers this season while adding his seventh win by TF - which is tied for the most on the team alongside Nicco Ruiz.
- An’ee Vigil earned the first major decision of his career at the D1 level after transferring from Clackamas CC
- Colton Hawks’ 6-4 win marked the 65th of his career between his time at ASU and Missouri
Quotes
Head Coach Zeke Jones
On the resiliency the team showed today:
“We got a win, so that was good. There were definitely some takeaways. I was not happy with how we started. Pierson wrestled a really good match and made one mistake, and that’s the thing in wrestling. Unlike other sports, there’s one move that can end a match.. There's no touchdown or basket that ends a basketball or football game. That's one of the beautiful things of our sport, but also one of the challenges,[that] you can get pinned. So that was a bummer for Pierson (Manville), and then Nicco (Ruiz) got caught on his back, and we had to go to the team and say, “You guys need to wake up.” Then after that, I think we got on a roll, and at the end of the day, we’re wrestling as well as we have all year, and I think it’s showing up at the right time.”
On his message to wrestlers that are up next:
“You always hand off energy from one teammate to another. That's what all great teams do. You get momentum and you hand it to your teammates. Michael Jordan used to talk about when his team lost momentum that he felt it was on him to be the guy to get the momentum back. I think that’s how Kaleb (Larkin) came up, then Nicco, then Cael (Valencia), and then Shay (Addison). You could see the energy rise, and we just handed it off because they knew that’s the responsibility of a team that gets its hand raised.”
Redshirt sophomore Nicco Ruiz
On not dropping a dual after the first two losses:
“It’s an amazing feeling. Personally, I didn’t start off that well and it didn’t feel good. But we came back, we thought about what was going on, and went back to our game plan. Now we’re doing pretty good, and I’d like to keep that going. It feels really good because a lot of our team is like that too. It’s great because we’re just leading up to the Big 12s and the NCAAs this next month, so it’s a great run right now.”
On key takeaways from tonight's dual:
“What I really took away was all the moves I hit, all the things I could do, all the stuff I know - like getting my conditioning up. For us, I think of every match as another practice match. I'm going to go out there and try to do all my stuff. It helps me just look at [what is working in a match]. It helps me grow so much.”
Follow along
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