On Friday, Jayson Ness sat in his Bloomington home and watched Gable Steveson play the ultimate game of beat the clock in the Tokyo Olympics, and immediately felt a slight sense of déjà vu.
Steveson, the Gophers heavyweight from Apple Valley, had just completed the most improbable of comebacks, scoring two takedowns in the final 10 seconds, including the winning two-pointer with 0.2 remaining, to beat Georgia's Geno Petriashvili for the gold medal.
The final takedown gave Steveson a 9-8 lead after he trailed 8-5, and he was awarded an extra point for an unsuccessful video challenge by Petriashvili's corner for the 10-8 final score.
The scene from Tokyo brought Ness back to the night of March 20, 2010, in Omaha. Ness, a Gophers senior 133-pounder at the time, was wrestling Iowa's Daniel Dennis for the NCAA championship. Trailing 4-1 in the third period, Ness produced his own improbable rally with a four-point move in the final seconds to win 6-4.
"Definitely, a little bit [similar], but this one was much bigger,'' Ness said, laughing. "No offense to myself or Dan Dennis, but [Steveson and Petriashvili] are two of the best athletes in the entire world.''
WATCH: Jayson Ness wins 2010 NCAA championship
Back in 2010, Ness trailed Dennis 4-2 with 1:06 left, but Dennis successfully countered Ness' moves for the next 56 seconds. With 14 seconds to go, Ness got in deep on a double-leg shot and took Dennis down and to his back with seven ticks left. The four-point move gave Ness a dramatic 6-4 win, capping a 31-0 season and stunning a crowd heavy with Iowa fans.
"I'm guessing that Gable and I had the same mind-set: Just stick to the game plan and don't get rattled and go for something stupendous,'' Ness said of the late heroics. "Just chip away at that lead.''
Luke Becker, the Gophers assistant head coach, saw parallels in the two matches. "What a rush of emotions. So crazy,'' said Becker, who watched the Olympic match from the Athletes Village with Gophers team members and Steveson's family.
Emotions from both ends of the spectrum were on display in the second period Friday, when Steveson saw his 5-2 lead turn into an 8-5 deficit after Petriashvili got a takedown and back-to-back two-point exposures.
"Oh, man. My heart, my stomach just sunk, because he was wrestling such a good match and had it,'' said Becker, the NCAA 157-pound champion in 2002 and a member of the Gophers' 2001 and '02 national title teams. "We went from, 'All right, we've got this. He's gonna win it, he's gonna win it.' Then he gets taken down and gives up those turns, and it's, 'Oh, I can't believe we're going to lose this.' Then he finds a way to win.''
Steveson's winning surge started when wrestling resumed with 13 seconds left. He got around Petriashvili for a takedown with 10 seconds to go, making it 8-7, then set the Georgian loose, prompting the referee to stop and reset the action with 6.5 seconds to go.
"Gable was smart enough to get up off him – which I don't think you're supposed to do – and forced the hand of the referee to bring them back up [and stop the clock],'' Becker said.
Then came the winner, with Steveson's quickness enabling him to spin around Petriashvili just in the nick of time.
"Gable did the same thing he did all tournament,'' Ness said. "He pulled the guy down and ran around behind him. … He's so fast and runs it so hard around that corner.''
The key, though, was wrestling through the final whistle, something Ness did 11 years ago in the NCAAs and Steveson did Friday on wrestling's biggest stage.
"It's something we always preach in Gopher wrestling,'' Ness said. "It doesn't matter what the score is, doesn't matter what's going on. … You wrestle hard to the end and make sure that [opponent] remembers.''
