Hercules Mata'afa gave up wresting, and it was not a bad idea

Just getting to the state playoffs in any high school sport is tough, but, for Hercules Mata'afa, he not only made the playoffs -- he was a back-to-back state championship runner-up in Hawaii for wrestling. The redshirt freshman defensive tackle wrestled at the 215-pound weight class, but gave up the sport his senior year to focus on football.

In an article with Stefanie Loh of The Seattle Times, Hercules gives praise to his wrestling workouts for helping him improve and become one of the best young defensive lineman in the game: "I think wrestling is a good sport for football because it (trains) a lot of leverage and hip work."

Without ever starting a collegiate game, Mata'afa has earned USA Today Freshman All-American honors, all-Pac-12 honorable mention, and was mentioned in Heisman talks by Andy Staples.

In the same article by Loh, Mata'afa's mother talks about how her son wrestles with his sisters whenever he comes home: "In our living room, there's a futon on the floor and no table and chairs any more because they rumble." Hercules is one of six children and has four sisters, two of which are state champion wrestlers, making it a lot tougher for him.

With 6 sacks, he is tied for the team lead with Darryl Paulo, and is just 2 tackles for a loss behind Paulo (who has 12 and leads the team), and Mata'afa leads the team in QB hurries.

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Football:

Washington State QB, who played for and lived next to Cardinal Gibbons, excited to be playing against UM | Miami Herald
Quarterback Peyton Bender, the only player from Broward County or Miami-Dade County on the Washington State squad, will face off against the Hurricanes in the Sun Bowl.

WSU Cougars links: Cougs head to El Paso for the Sun Bowl | The Seattle Times
Bowl week is upon us. The Washington State Cougars head to El Paso Monday morning and will practice on site this week before the Sun Bowl against Miami on Saturday

Wrestling background helped prepare WSU Cougars’ Hercules Mata’afa for football | The Seattle Times
Mata’afa gave up wrestling before his senior year of high school to focus on his first love — football. And despite coming off the bench in every WSU game this year, the redshirt freshman was an All-Pac-12 honorable-mention selection

Basketball:

No more easy opponents for WSU basketball - Spokesman.com - Dec. 21, 2015
The college basketball season is still too new and teams have not played enough games yet to fully trust the algorithms and metrics that attempt to compare teams based on the toughness of their respective foes.