Eastern wrestlers were unable to hold their ground against an impressive No.9 ranked University of Missouri team when they locked up on Saturday.

The Panthers suffered a 36-10 defeat Saturday giving the team its third loss of the season.

“Seven out of their 10 wrestlers were ranked in the top 15, again,” head coach Ralph McCausland said. “If we wrestled again there would be a different outcome. If everything came into place we could have split with them.”

Of the 10 matches that took place at the meet the Panthers were only able to win twice. Pat Dowty returned to pin his Missouri opponent Chris McCormick in 4:28 into the match at the 133-pound weight class.

The other win for Eastern came at heavyweights where freshman Pete Ziminski won a major decision over No.13 Kevin Heron.

“We planned for exposure like this to get key matches so the guys could elevate themselves,” McCausland said. “Pete just went and took advantage of it.”

The Panthers had to deal with a few unfortunate situations that could have changed the outcome of the meet.

Eastern had to forfeit the dual at 125 pounds which just handed Missouri easy points.

Jerod Bruner was pinned in 58 seconds during the 141-pound bout, and Brian Hawxhurst was defeated 18-4 at 149 pounds.

Frank DeFilippis lost 4-1 at 157 pounds but to Missouri’s Kenny Burleson.

“Frank wrestled well,” McCausland said. “He had some opportunities.”

Sam Smith was defeated in the following match at 165 pounds by technical fall 15-0. Louis Taylor was also defeated in 174-pound match, 11-5.

“Louis wrestled extremely well for four of the seven minutes in the match,” McCausland said. “He lost points in the last few minutes. In this situation he gave up two points twice. Four points make a big difference in matches .”

After Louis suffered his defeat, Kyle Bracey was up at 184 pounds and lost 12-2. Lastly at 197 pounds Jim Kassner lost his match by a surprising score of 31-15.

“There wasn’t anything hidden,” McCausland said. “In some situations they just out wrestled us. We need to rise to the occasions and wrestle the full seven minutes with no lapse of movement.”