Varsity is the free Official Digital Magazine of Wisconsin Athletics, covering Badgers football, basketball, hockey and more each week.
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BADGERING RYAN TAYLOR The redshirt freshman from Fayette County, Ohio, currently ranks No. 14 as the Badgers' starter at 125 lbs. Taylor opened his UW campaign with an impressive 8-0 record before suffering a pair of losses to top-10 opponents, including No. 1 Jesse Delgado of Illinois. Taylor won three straight state titles at 120 lbs. at St. Paris Graham High School, helping the Falcons to four consecutive Ohio state titles during his high school career. How would you evaluate your first season with UW so far? "It's been a good experience. Wrestling-wise, there's a lot of things I need to work on. It's new balancing school and wrestling. In high school there really wasn't too much of a balance because school wasn't the caliber as it is here. I just have to be a lot more organized every day, make sure I get everything done when I'm supposed to and make sure I get the training done that I need to." The team is off to a 2-0 start in the Big Ten. What's the key to keep that going? "I think the main thing is we need to be more consistent as a team, which has definitely started to happen. I've got a lot of stuff to work on, personally, to make myself more consistent, working on little quirky things that I do sometimes that I shouldn't. Basically just the same thing for everybody else. We're going to tighten things up as the season goes on. We'll get better. It's a process." How about the excitement level in the first Big Ten dual (UW came from behind to win 19-18)? "I think it gave the team a lot of confidence coming into the second half of the season, because not everybody wrestled like they wanted to, including me. And a couple other guys lost matches that they shouldn't have, just weren't solid with their technique. It's big that we can take hits and still come back and win as a team with all the other guys wrestling solid. We just need to make sure we're firing on all cylinders." "That comes back to the little quirky things that I'm doing. Both matches I really didn't give myself a chance to basically wrestle at all. I went out there, I got caught against Illinois and during UNI I left my arm up a little bit, which is something I get yelled at every day for. But I'm working on it. I think it's good for me, all in all. It's not March right now. March is when I need to have everything straightened out, and I have a long time to do that." What have your two losses taught you? 24 // VARSITY December 19, 2013 QUICK Q'S WITH RYAN Country Favorite music? Wrestling lounge Favorite hangout spot? Hunting Favorite hobby? Wrestling Favorite sport to watch? Dan Gable Favorite athlete growing up? Alex Yde Funniest wrestler on the team?