Plum’s Vince Citrano falls in quarters, vows to improve on Day 2 at WPIALs

By: Greg Macafee
Friday, February 28, 2020 | 9:07 PM

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Since his two losses at the WPIAL Class AAA tournament last season as a freshman, Plum’s Vince Citrano has been looking for redemption.

In his second appearance at WPIALs, Citrano got off to a good start Friday night at Canon-McMillan.

The 113-pound sophomore earned a gritty win in his first match. A second-period escape allowed Citrano to earn a 1-0 victory, but it didn’t happen how he would have liked.

“I just didn’t get it started, and that kind of affected me a little bit,” Citrano said. “I worked super hard, but I need to work a lot smarter than I am and set things up more.”

The victory allowed Citrano to advance to the quarterfinals and set up a meeting with No. 2 seed Nico Taddy from West Allegheny, but Citrano lost an 8-0 major decision.

Taddy, a freshman, went 31-5 this season and was seeded behind only defending PIAA champion Carter Dibert of Franklin Regional.

Taddy earned a first-period takedown, a second-period reversal and scored on a takedown and a near-fall in the final period against Citrano.

“I just need to keep going through guys, and both those matches were unacceptable in my book,” Citrano said. “I want to be perfect every time, and that’s obviously not going to happen. But after that first match, it was just onto the next one.”

Citrano will have to work his way through the consolation bracket Saturday to qualify for the state tournament in Hershey next weekend. South Fayette’s Cohlman Carpenter will be his first opponent Saturday.

“Nico is a great competitor. He’s a freshman, and he’s had a pretty good year,” Citrano said. “It set me up good for (Saturday), so it’s time to go through guys (Saturday) and try to get third.”

Carpenter won his first match with a 12-2 major decision over Mars’ Rocco Darocy. Then, he lost to Dibert via a 15-0 technical fall.

Notable

• Jack Blumer inched one pin closer to matching the Kiski Area career pin record. He pinned McKeesport’s Clayton Holloway in 1:29. The record of 106 is held by Shane Kuhn.

• In his first match, Fox Chapel’s Alex Wecht came from behind to win. He was trailing West Mifflin’s Gavin Russo late and pulled of an escape and a takedown in the final 35 seconds to take the lead. He earned a pin at the 5:45 mark.

• Kiski Area’s Nick Delp (170) and Brayden Roscosky (195) earned pins in less than a minute in their Round of 16 matches. Delp pinned his opponent in 59 seconds. Roscosky earned the fall in 54 seconds.

Greg Macafee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Greg by email at gmacafee@triblive.com or via Twitter .

Tags: Kiski Area