Cameron Caffey: Full Transcript from The Drive with Jack

Redshirt sophomore Cameron Caffey joined Jack Ebling and The Drive with Jack yesterday to discuss the 2019-20 season, his academic success and the future of Spartan Wrestling. Full transcript and phone interview below.

Listen to "* Cameron Caffey, MSU Wrestler" on Spreaker.

On his Big Ten Championship match at 184 pounds where he finished runner-up...

Yeah, I was it was a close one. It came down to the wire. Sadly, just not in my favor.

On his mindset in the match against Penn State's Aaron Brooks where he fell 3-2...

Yeah so, I guess in that last period, we were tied up. For me personally, I'm a pretty offensive wrestler, so I'm lookin got attack and just do what I normally do. I don't adjust very well in the middle of matches. Looking back, I should have realized that, you know, he's doing this or he's doing that whenever I take shots. It's kind of hard to make those adjustments in a match. I took a shot, he reshot and you know, the rest is history.

On if he would have been a little more conservative if he was to do it again or is that just not the way he's wired....

It's just not the way I'm wired.

On being so efffective this season, especially towards the end of the year...

Well, I think that, you know, I started paying attention to a lot of the things that I was doing wrong before. Whether that was in tieups or it was the way that I'm shooting or the way that my stance is. I started paying attention to that kind of stuff. I feel like I became much more in tune with myself, wrestling wise. Just in my body, the way I was moving.Things just started coming together there at the end, especially after the Rutgers match. That was my last loss before Big Ten's and I wasn't supposed to lose it. So, going in, I didn't really have a big head, but I expected to win it, and I didn't win it. I remember after that, I really just has to look long and hard at what I was doing and me and my coaches got to work. We fixed up everything and made that 12 or 13-match run, or whatever it was.

On if the win at No. 4 Wisconsin this season really made the team realize what they were capable of...

Well, I like to think that we knew that we could do that a long time before then. It was always little things that were getting us. The little things, you know, we would lose this dual by a point, or we would lose this dual by two or three. There were a lot of close matches with a lot of fairly good teams. That day at Wisconsin, our guys wrestled really well, we went up there to compete and just ended up taking care of business. But I'd like to think that we realized before that, that we were capable of it.

On his distinctive hair...

Well you know, half would say it's the best, half would say it's the worst. I like to think my team likes it. Maybe some other schools fans don't like it, but I'm sure If I was wrestling for them they'd like it too. With the hair color thing, I guess this year was just, I was really curious over the summer. I'd been wanting to see what it would look like, so I just went ahead and I did it. There were actually different hairstyles I did this year too, there was a time where I had my hair twisted up, a time I had it kind of in cornrows. It was a bunch of different stuff. There was a lot of experimentation in the first half of the year with my hair and my wrestling.

On his work in the classroom as a computer engineering major...

Yeah so, even going into college, academics were a really big thing to me. Part of what made me attracted to Michigan State was the Honors College. So I came up here and the whole time Coach Chandler is on me like, 'Hey, we want you to be our next Presidential Award winner.' So he's always been on me about classes and making sure I keep academics up. But, I know that there were a lot of close calls those first couple years keeping the 4.0 gpa. I did eventually end up losing just by one class, I got a 3.5 in one class. I know that there were a lot of close calls and a lot of late nights doing homework or studying.I guess, just wasn't really in me to give that up to easily.

On what it was like when he got the 3.5 in a class...

Man, I was bummed out. So we had a tournament in Las Vegas the week before finals. There were two classes where I had the finals in them back-to-back on Monoday, and we got back Sunday. I remember spending all of Sunday studying and by the end of Sunday I was like, 'man, I still don't think I have the material down well enough, and I didn't.' The class was Linguistics, not even a computer engineering class.

On why he chose computer engineering as a major...

It stuck out to me because I've always been like a big fan of Sci-Fi. I was looking at computer science and thought you know, maybe dealing with robots would be kind of fun as well. Computer engineering is kind of a hybrid between that software and that hardware part of computers and technology, so that is what I ended up going with. With regards to it versus other majors, there's a lot of times I would see guys get to do this or do that, but here I am stuck in the house doing homework. Like I said, definitely not for the faint of heart.

On his thoughts on the future of Spartan Wrestling...

This program can be great in the next couple years. We have some great recruits coming in. We've got guys still improving, starting to find themselves. We have guys who weren't in the lineup this year, who are going to be trying to make returns next year. We've got guys who are injured, who may or may not make a big difference. We have Rayvon Foley coming back, we have guys who are redshirts this year who are going to be in the lineup next year potentially. Then we have recruits coming in who are going to be providing for us for years down the road. We've got a lot in store for our supporters and fans. I'm definitely excited for these next couple years. For me academically, hopefully same ole thing, good grades, all A's.

On how tough it is for a freshman to come in and not redshirt and compete right away...

It's very tough. You know, in looking at guys who we have right now. We have two guys who have done that who are still wrestling right now, that's Drew Hughes and Rayvon Foley. Both of them were very, very good, even their redshirt year. But they took their lumps, and that's kind of one of those things where people talk about true freshmen having those head-scratching losses where it's like, 'what happened here?' He beat this guy and then he went and lost to this guy. That's the young guy still putting things together because they're wrestlign veterans, they're wrestling guys who have been doing it for awhile.

On where we will find Cameron Caffey five years from now...

I hope I'm not still in school five years from now. I'd like to be applying my knowledge somewhere. Hopefully just doing something wtih cyber security.

Players Mentioned

Cameron Caffey

Rayvon Foley

Drew Hughes

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