January 12, 2015

Monday, Januar y 12, 20 15

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DYLAN SUN | MUSTANG NE WS

A FIRST FOR EVERYTHING | Despite Emma Phillips’ lack of illustration experience, author Caldric Blackwell was so impressed by her previous work he commissioned her to do art for “The Boy Who Couldn’t Cry Wolf.”

Art class to Amazon: Student sketches children’s book Kely Trom They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but art and design junior Emma Phillips, who recently illustrated the children’s book “The Boy Who Couldn’t Cry Wolf ” by Caldric Blackwell, knows this isn’t always true.

Phillips met UC Santa Barbara alumnus and author Blackwell through her roommate, who is Blackwell’s

@kttrom

sister. Blackwell had written two other published books with Icasm Press and was so impressed by Phillips’ previous artwork that he wanted to work with her for his upcoming book.

In true Cal Poly fashion, Phillips stepped up to the challenge.

“I had never illustrated a children’s book before, but

there I was, my first time trying it with an actual publishing company,” Phillips said. “That was scary, and they had to be patient with me. I had no idea how long it can take and how hard it can be.”

Not only was the process of illustrating a children’s book foreign to Phillips, but her previous artistic style had been more feminine and realistic. She had no formal experience drawing in cartoon style.

see EMMA, pg 5.

The end of priority registration Shelley Westerson Cal Poly is changing the way it does registration. It all started with the introduction of PolyPlanner last spring. In this new system — effective Fall 2015 — students will no longer have priorities, but current students’ priorities won’t expire until Summer 2016.

Why get rid of priorities?

The old system — which consists of 12 registration rotations where students are randomly placed in rotations by last name — is being phased out to bring in a fairer and more efficient system, according to Cal Poly Provost Kathleen Enz Finken.

“When I came to Cal Poly, I was very surprised at the way they had set up the priority system that we currently have,” she said.

“It does not necessarily support progress towards graduation.”

One of the main problems with the old system is that students were not using their priorities as originally anticipated, said Enz Finken. The purpose of each student receiving three priorities was so they would use them during their fourth year to ensure they got the

see REGISTRATION, pg 2.

@shelley_westers classes they needed to graduate on time.

Instead of saving their priorities, students are using them earlier on in their academic careers when they have a late registration date or want to take a class that they feel is in high demand and otherwise may not get into.

Cal Poly Registrar Cem Sunata knows how many American colleges give priority to students based on their year — seniors registering first, freshmen last. Why wouldn’t Cal Poly adopt a similar or better system?

“People are quite behind in their innovation in academic policies or procedures or practices, let alone to go into something as complicated as the registration system,” he said. “Actually, people are very weary of it. They don’t want to touch it with a 20-foot pole.”

The introduction of PolyPlanner But Cal Poly is challenging the system. Through a series of emails last spring, PolyPlanner was introduced. Its purpose is to give students the opportunity to plan out their entire schedule for the rest of their time at Cal Poly and be able to share that information with the administration.

ILIANA ARROYOS | MUSTANG NE WS EARLY BIRD | Lead groundsworker Dan Williams’ work day starts at 4:30 a.m, the time he gets out of bed.

The unsung heroes of Cal Poly: Those who clean behind the scenes Samantha Pryor @samanthapryor94

Dan Williams wakes up each morning at about 4:30 a.m. and arrives at Cal Poly around 6:00 a.m.

His first task is to check for garbage can overflow.

He then investigates the stairwells, making sure there are no safety hazards that could cause a person to trip or fall. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, he mows each lawn for three to four hours. Mowing can start as early as 5 a.m., depending on the day.

Williams tries to get to work early in order to get

the task finished before a majority of students show up for class. Mowing can be a noisy chore, especially behind the echoes of building 10; he can only pull it off until 10 a.m.

He begins at the corner of Highland Drive and California Boulevard. From there he mows the following areas on campus: engineering buildings, campus market, key shop, North Perimeter Road, library, Dexter Lawn, Alex and Faye Spanos Theater, Christopher Cohan Performing Arts Center, Graphic Arts building, health center and the president’s house.

see UNSUNG, pg 3.

Women’s basketball remains undefeated in Big West play Nick Larson @CPMustangSports

IAN BILLINGS | MUSTANG NE WS

The Cal Poly women’s basketball team (7-7, 2-0 Big West Conference) remained unbeaten in conference play with its convincing 56-41 defeat of rival UC Santa Barbara (0-14, 0-1) Saturday in the Thunderdome.

The Mustangs were led by senior guard Kristen Ale, who dropped in a team-high 14 points. Senior guard Ariana Elegado and sophomore forward Hannah Gilbert also scored in double digits, tallying 11 points each. Elegado also had a team-high six assists.

Senior forward Taryn Garza continued her dominance of the boards, bringing down nine rebounds.

The Gauchos were no match for the Mustangs, and still haven’t won a game this season.

Cal Poly is now tied atop the Big West standings with Long Beach State, who is 15-1 this season. The Mustangs’ next game is coincidentally against the 49ers on Jan. 15 in Mott Athletics Center.

News... 1-3 | Arts... 4-5 | Classifieds... 7 | Sports... 6, 8

Monday, January 12, 2015

NEWS | 2

JOSEPH PACK | MUSTANG NE WS CHANGES

| PolyPlanner has been an issue for some Cal Poly students. “I hate it. I hate it with a burning fiery passion,” electrical engineering senior Kendall Searing said of the online tool.

Registration continued from pg 1.

The changes are not welcomed by everyone. Students became frustrated with PolyPlanner for many reasons: It’s complicated, confusing, time consuming, and those that did not complete it in time were placed in the 13th registration rotation for the following quarter. After the first quarter with the new system, the Office of the Registrar forgave the approximately 1,000 students who failed to update their profile and placed them back in their original rotations. Students who forgot to update for the following winter quarter were not forgiven unless they had a legitimate excuse, Sunata said.

Registering for classes can be complicated, and the required use of PolyPlanner has created more problems for electrical engineering senior Kendall Searing.

“I hate it. I hate it with a burning fiery passion,” he said. “I don’t like having to do an extra step when I’m registering. I already do a lot of planning and

figuring out what I’m doing. It’s just more annoying to then have to input all the schedule into another thing and update it every quarter.”

Why change the system now?

Though the registration changes have caused problems and frustrations for students, the overall goal is to improve four-year graduation rates. Sunata believes this will be accomplished by the new system because it forces students to be more responsible when it comes to their degree progress.

In 2010, Cal Poly introduced the Expected Academic Progress Policy, which most students know as their Degree Progress Report. This allows students to use their portal as a tool to stay on track to graduate by managing how many degree applicable units have been taken — information that will be useful since the new registration will be broken down into brackets based off degree applicable units taken rather than class standing.

For example, students with 75 to 100 percent of their degree progress completed will be in the first round of rotations. This means that registration times will not be given out until two weeks prior to registration in order to have the most updated information.

If students are not on top of updating their degree progress through the portal, their registration date will be delayed. Also, students will have to apply for things such as course substitutions, adding a minor and changing their major as soon as possible so the Office of the Registrar can keep their records updated.

I DON’T LKE HAVING TO DO AN EXTRA STEP WHEN I’M REGISTERING. Kendall Searing

“In no time in the past, in any higher education institution that I know of, have students had a say in what courses should be offered in the future quarters

or semesters,” Sunata said. “That is unheard of and that is what we are trying to accomplish.”

If everything goes according to plan, eventually the system will run smoothly and unlike any other university, since Cal Poly is the innovator of the Degree Audit Software. Money and time will be saved because office personnel will no longer be needed to plan registration rotations; it will all be automatically sorted through the software.

“I’m actually really excited about the new registration system,” child development sophomore Anna BlackHogins said. “I don’t think priorities were really a great thing because first of all, freshmen couldn’t even use them, and even if you use a priority, there’s such a huge population that has the early special circumstance registration and so many people use priorities that it doesn’t end up being such a great advantage.”

Love it or hate it, the new registration system is here to stay in hopes of making degree progress toward graduation the new priority.

Monday, January 12, 2015

NEWS | 3

Mobile wallets: Redefining ‘paying it forward’

DAKOTA GREENWICH | MUSTANG NE WS THE FUTURE | Bitcoin offers an alternative to traditional cash. “Bitcoin is something that isn’t going to be going away,” Apple Tree Clothing owner Ben Vigil said.

Sam Gilbert Special to Mustang News

“I don’t have any cash on me. Can I just Venmo you?”

Venmo has become both a noun and a verb. Online banking took one giant leap for mankind this past year. As physical cash took the backseat to the convenience of downloading an application on a smart phone and just pressing “confirm,” money began flowing via cyberspace from one bank account to the next with no questions asked.

Online forms of payment such as Venmo, Bitcoin and Apple Pay provide simple accessibility that catches the attention of the population, ranging from college students to local storeowners.

Ben Vigil, owner of Apple Tree Clothing in Santa Maria, welcomes the change that technology brings if it means offering amenities to his customers. As more customers ask for different forms of payment, Vigil makes the effort to expand the acceptance of

different payment methods to be more amenable to those who ask about it.

“For me, it’s a service that I want to be able to provide for our customers out there as the trend continues to get bigger and bigger,” Vigil said.

Vigil’s clothing store currently accepts payments through Bitcoin, a digital currency. Bitcoin users transfer the virtual currency to each other from unique digital wallets. Bitcoin relies on its open source software to ensure that it is not tampered with.

“I’ve always been into crypto and alternative currencies,” Vigil said. “Bitcoin is something that isn’t going to be going away — I think we’re going to keep seeing more of it.”

Vigil said the new form of payment created notoriety for his store and improved business.

“I’ve always been a kind of cutting-edge guy willing to try new things,” Vigil said. “Bitcoin has given us so much publicity and people come in asking about it all the time.”

Even more current than Bitcoin is Venmo. Once a credit card is put into the system, any sum of money accessible from a checking account can be transferred at the click of a button.

Brand-name used clothing store Twice, located in Santa Maria, has made Venmo a part of its system.

Twice Senior Community Manager Rachel Signorella said it’s an interactive way to pay without having to use physical money, which can be an effort to retrieve from the bank.

“I think that it’s already improving our business,” Signorella said.

At Twice, customers send clothing, handbags and shoes to the store, where employees then evaluate them and send them an offer for the items.

“Having multiple payment methods, especially since we’re paying our customers for goods that they send to us to donate, is a great way to make our customers feel like they’re getting their share,” Signorella said.

Chris Luhur, director of marketing at Twice, said they made Venmo a feature due to popular demand.

“We were especially interested in Venmo because it’s weighted very heavily by the younger generation, so we wanted to help our customers,” Luhur said.

The concept of having personal information on a mobile phone leads to questions of security and how safe it really is to have such intricate details so easily accessible. Both Signorella and Vigil, however, feel confident about the new additions.

“Venmo allows you the option to not put in your banking information at the very beginning, which opens a lot of doors,” Signorella said.

Starting out, users can create a Venmo account without automatically circulating money straight from their checking. If another user pays them, it goes into the account on the application, so when a payment needs to be made to somebody else, the money from that account goes into a rotating system.

Vigil said he trusts the system and would be willing to use Venmo in addition to BitCoin.

“Different ideas at first are scary, but then you get used it,” Vigil said. “I think for the people who are against it need to just accept and embrace it.”

Civil engineering sophomore Rebecca Villalobos said she and her friends downloaded Venmo with paying each other for rent in mind.

“I think it’s kind of a college thing and the older generation isn’t as into downloading applications and putting credit cards on their cell phones,” Villalobos said.

One of the social aspects the younger generation is more commonly associated with is when users make a payment on Venmo, a home screen shows up where the public can see short descriptions of who made a payment and what it was for.

Luhur said one of the best parts about the younger generation using the application is the social aspect of it.

“On our end, it improves business and it’s one of the perks of Venmo because users can communicate exactly what they’re paying for,” Luhur said.

In addition, Vigil sees online banking as the future for all generations.

As Vigil recounted an incident that occurred last week, his voice lit up as he explained a customer came from New Zealand, where they also have a similar system to Venmo, and she said she doesn’t physically use her credit cards anymore.

“I look at my son, who is two years old, and I think about what the world will be like when he’s 20,” Vigil said. “I really do think that this is something of the future and this trend is just going to keep progressing.”

ILIANA ARROYOS | MUSTANG NE WS LONG DAY

| After majoring in business in college, Williams decided he didn’t like sitting behind a desk. Now he has more than 30 years of experience in the horticulture, where he spends his time outside.

UNSUNG continued from pg 1.

Before working as a lead in the inner campus zone, however, Williams began working at Cal Poly as a grounds worker for the sports complex and then as a lead in the housing department.

“I went over to inner campus because I wanted more of a challenge,” he said. “It’s event driven a lot in the inner campus.”

Working in the horticultural business for a little over 30 years now, Williams laughed as he mentioned that he started out as a business major in college.

“I didn’t like sitting behind a desk all day, so I stopped and went to a junior college,” he said.

Williams went on to work in a nursery and started to learn the trade by watering plants and delivering flowers. He even became a certified nurseryman.

“I loved it,” he said. “You work with customers a lot and people coming with problems with their plants. It’s a lot of interaction.”

Williams has worked at Cal Poly for 14 years and each year enjoys taking pride in all the landscape areas. According to Ron Hostick, landscape manager, Williams’ desire to have a successful facility is very evident.

“He is thoughtful on how he does his work,”

Hostick said. “He takes into consideration a variety of different attributes that each person has and tries to build on those.”

William’s position as a lead allows him to facilitate a group of five other grounds workers.

He assists them in their daily workload and helps them build upon new landscape projects.

One of the more recent landscape projects Williams conducted was the renovation of Dexter Lawn between Soar and Week Of Welcome (WOW).

The renovation of the lawn was short lived, seeing as the “WOW tank,” as Williams calls it, arrived directly after he had just finished seeding the lawn.

“I see that as just the cost of doing business,” he said. “We’re here for the students.”

When asked w here Wi lliams sees himself in 10 years, he chuckled.

“Hopefully retired,” he said. “[But] I re a l ly do like working here. I’m real happy.”

Monday, January 12, 2015

ARTS | 4

Your Starbucks astrology, according to Total Frat Move Annie Vainshtein @annievain

In a world where we tend to our social media accounts religiously, online quizzes have become a socio-psychological phenomenon. In pursuit of the perennial need to receive judgments about our character faster than we can say “bae,” we often turn to sites like BuzzFeed or Upworthy and internalize their assessments of us, which are most often pretty arbitrary.

This is supposed to be an expert column, so you’re in luck.

Citing work from psychological maverick Carl Jung, the founders of Pi Kappa Alpha at University of Virginia circa 1868 and various personal observations of suburban high school cafeteria dynamics, I will attempt to tell you exactly what kind of person you are based on which Starbucks drink you happen to be holding.

I understand there are a lot of people in the world, and so my projections might not seamlessly align. I’m merely sketching the basic picture; it’s up to you to fill in the lines.

All characters are fictitious.

Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

1. Chocolate Chip Frappuccino The kind of eagerness that governs the nature of a Frappuccino drinker is one that is rarely found anywhere else, with the exception of most transatlantic tourist destinations. If you drink Frappuccinos, mind you, they can be chocolate chip, vanilla, java chip, caramel — they all apply — you most likely fall into the category of people who also buy counterfeit Jessica Simpson perfume off the

sketchy street vendors in Times Square. More often than not, these very same people are the ones you see running once a year, on July 11, to get the free slushie. Most of the time, 7/11 has run out.

Frappuccinos (a close relative of the slushie) belong to the underbelly of society. The moderately overweight Oklahoman dads (those who grill, boast mediocre golf skills and always have slushie stains on their shirts) and the middle school student (scrawny, Axedrenched with a penny board in hand). The dad works hand-inhand with the middle schooler, who drinks the frappuccino to impress members of the opposite sex with the maturity and sexual prowess implied by the consumption of a beverage that isn’t hot chocolate.

2. Cappuccino Compared to the linguistically embroidered names of most Starbucks drinks, cappuccino sounds fairly weak. However, this is not the case.

Let’s start with the basics. If you drink cappuccinos, you fall into one of three categories.

First: These are the people who stand in coffee lines as a social exertion, mistakenly believing espresso is a syrup and at a pivotal moment in their lives heard someone order a cappuccino. Enchanted by the foreignsounding phonetics of the word “cappuccino,” they order it for the rest of their lives. And every time they do, they think either of “The Lizzie McGuire Movie” or the Leaning Tower of Pisa — the two most important products of Italy, of course.

The second category includes those who like them only because the steamed microfoam overload takes them back to the days of the 2002 Super Bowl, when their dad let them try a little bit of the foam from his Miller High Life. Things

JOSEPH PACK | MUSTANG NEWS

#BA SIC | From frappuccinos to Pike Place Roast, you never know what dark secrets your Starbucks order might reveal. with dad aren’t so good these days, but cappuccinos temporarily create the illusion of the longgone nuclear family construct we all long for.

And the third? These are the pseudo-intellectuals who always imagined themselves in New

York City and would love to be at a small coffee/bookshop/artistic hub but either don’t have the courage to go against the grain or don’t have the luxury of options. The thought of Goodwill repulses them. These people are hip-adjacent. Almost bohemian.

Cool is just one flannel away.

3. Pike Place Roast People who order Pike Place Roasts can be compared to Cuisinart’s Custom Classic Toaster

Oven, which you can find at Bed, Bath & Beyond (fouryear warranty). They’re sturdy, rustic and live up to other people’s expectations about 30 percent of the time. The Pike Place roast is overwhelmingly strong, known for its unique notes of Air Jordans, Obey™ and Rohypnol. The drinkers of a Pike Place Roast only take it black. They don’t need any more sweet in their lives; they get enough of it from Busch

and Monster Rehab. They don’t drink coffee because they like it — they drink coffee because their role model Riff Raff does.

But most importantly, they drink the Pike roast to come to Starbucks, and they come to Starbucks because their aunt Suzanne gave them a gift card and they don’t spend their own money on drinks with less than 5 percent alcohol. And also they get bored a lot. The paninis are low-key “sick,” too.

Monday, January 12, 2015

ARTS | 5 Emma continued from pg 1.

Art and design senior Sammy Ness is Phillips’ classmate in the graphic design program. She felt the style Phillips adopted fit well with the book’s intended atmosphere.

“Her work usually carries the air of being very welcoming,” Ness said. “It’s been great to watch her approaches to each new project. I would describe Emma’s illustration style here as really well-suited for children’s books. She creates great spaces of color, and for a book about werewolves, it has a very friendly atmosphere.”

Luckily, Blackwell and Phillips were able to come up with a style that not only suited the targeted age range, but also Blackwell’s vision for the project.

“She had a lot of input and I trusted her judgment because I had seen a lot of her work before,” Blackwell said. “I started by telling her the adjectives I had in mind for all of the characters and a few pictures I had seen elsewhere.”

The main character of the story, Byron Woodward, is a 6-year-old werewolf who is embarrassed about not being able to howl like the other children werewolves. The story was inspired by Blackwell’s research on children with autism.

However, this character posed the most difficulty to illustrate because of the inherently scary nature of werewolves.

“It was really hard to make the werewolf look not intimidating and still look like he could be a child,” Phillips said. “The werewolf was the hardest part by far.”

At first, Phillips made the character too cutesy for Blackwell’s taste and then overcompensated and made him too scary for a children’s book. Finally, they agreed on a style by referencing other cartoon werewolves and talking it out via email.

Phillips used digital painting in Photoshop, along with her Bamboo tablet and stylus to create all of the illustrations.

“The tablet was relatively new for me,” Phillips said. “This was my first time diving into using it so I actually had a few pages that I started out with that I ended up scrapping entirely because it was me learning how to use.”

Even though it was her first foray into the digital

DYL AN SUN | MUSTANG NE WS NEW ST YLE

| Phillips was new to cartoon-style art, but she accepted the challenge of new territory.

painting world, Phillips immediately recognized its value. Instead of having to recreate all of the elements again and again for all of the pages of the book, she could copy and paste them and then modify them with the program to make them match the scene on that page. This time-saving device came in handy for illustrating 28 pages, corner to corner.

Her painting professor, Daniel Dove, also helped her with the consistency and forms of her drawings.

“There are no real-life references for werewolves, so I had no idea, for example, what a werewolf would look like sitting cross-legged on the floor,” Phillips said.

Though Phillips had never illustrated professionally, there was one aspect of it that came naturally to her: working with others to create a product.

“In studio art classes, I always was concerned that I was too shallow to be an artist because my teachers would be like, ‘Do what you feel,’ and I never knew what to do,” Phillips said. “Through becoming a publicity officer with my high school leadership team, I learned that I actually loved working with people and having a prompt to work off of.”

Blackwell, one of Phillips’ first clients, appreciated her willing attitude.

“I am very happy with the final product,” Blackwell said. “We were able to get on the same page and I had a good understanding of what she wanted to do creatively with it. So far, all of the children I have interacted with have seemed to really like the illustrations and text.”

Phillips had to learn about all of the other business practices of publishing as she went, such as release forms and contracts stating that she could not share the book before the company did. It was a big leap from only being a student in classes where work was, for the most part, her own. However, the payoff of being able to see the results in others’ hands is what made the freelance project worth it in the end.

“You can work on a project or a campaign for a long time and it can be very stressful, but my favorite part is seeing it on the world,” Phillips said. “As soon as I searched for this book on Amazon, I got this sense of pride, which is one of the best feelings.”

Monday, January 12, 2015

SPORTS | 6

Men’s basketball drops close game against rival Gauchos IAN BILLINGS | MUSTANG NE WS LATE LOSS | Junior guard David Nwaba was held in check by UC Santa Barbara on Saturday night, scoring just six points on 2-of-9 shooting. Nwaba is still averaging a team-high 13.5 points per game this season.

Jesse Summers @CPMustangSports

Despite coming off a tough overtime road win at Hawaii in its first Big West Conference game of the year, the Cal Poly men’s basketball team was unable to snag its second consecutive victory against rival UC Santa Barbara, falling 45-50 on Saturday night.

Cal Poly led UC Santa Barbara for most of the game by containing Gaucho big man and three-time Player of the Week Alan Williams.

Williams, who leads the Gauchos in points and rebounds, got into foul trouble early in the second half, allowing Cal Poly to penetrate the middle and get closer looks — especially senior forward Brian Bennett, who exerted most of his energy in the first half to containing him.

“Our team’s mindset was to be physical with (Williams),” Bennett said. “A lot of us are returners on the team and we remember how physical we played against him in the tournament and we wanted to come out and do the same thing. Mostly to just get him out of his comfort zone.”

Bennett would later be able to find his groove and finished with 10 points and eight rebounds.

“I think Brian’s aggressiveness on the block has been real good,” head coach Joe Callero said. “We just also needed some kind of contribution off of the bench.”

Besides Bennett, the only other Mustang who seemed capable of knocking down a shot was junior forward Joel Awich, who finished with 13 points. A combined 23 between those two was more than the rest of the team combined.

“It would’ve been an oddity to win, due to how we shot,” Callero said. “We couldn’t buy a basket.”

The Gauchos led a mid-second-half surge, scoring seven unanswered points before the start of the final four minutes. With around three minutes remaining, the Gauchos found a rhythm behind the arc, one the Mustangs were unable to bounce back from.

With a complete 16-point swing, the Gauchos took control of the final minutes and captured its first regular season victory.

Junior guard David Nwaba, who is averaging double-digit points on the year, was unable to contribute in his normal fashion tonight, shooting just 2-of-9 from the field.

“Teams have been scouting me much better,” Nwaba explained. “I need to be more aggressive

and try to see what I can find, especially when they come at us with a zone. It just means to get back in the gym and put up some more shots.”

With a volleyball-style set of tip ins and outs from three of Cal Poly’s inside players with less than 20 seconds remaining, the Mustangs saw their shot at victory quickly tipped away.

“What it comes down to is that Wednesday at Hawaii was a victory and tonight was a loss,” Callero said. “It hurts to do it in front of a 3,000-plus crowd, but tomorrow morning it’s over and my job as a coach is to help prepare and move forward.”

The Mustangs will head down to face Long Beach State on Thursday, Jan. 15 at 7 p.m., the projected No. 1 seed in the Big West. The game will be featured on ESPN3.

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Monday, January 12, 2015

SPORTS | 8

Wrestling notches first win of season against Brown

JOSEPH PACK | MUSTANG NE WS PIN FOR THE WIN | The Cal Poly wrestling team ended the streak Saturday, coming away with its first victory of the season in a meet against Brown. The win came a day after a tough loss at home against Wyoming.

Harry Chang @HarryChangMN

Though it took the better part of three months, the Cal Poly wrestling team, in earning its first dual-meet win of the season, at least made it worth the wait.

The Mustangs (1-7) put on a show for the home crowd at the Mott Athletics Center Saturday afternoon against Brown (0-1) in a meet that included two pins by the Mustangs for two early wins, another win by senior Dominic Kastl and a massive decision for freshman Nicholas Fiegener in the 184 bout over the No. 16 wrestler in the nation, Brown’s Ophir Bernstein.

“We’re improving,” head coach Brendan Buckley said. “We’ve spent a lot of time in certain areas lately trying to improve, and you’re seeing it equate to points scored for us. We feel our team’s getting better and our guys have bought in. Technically we’re better and we’re wrestling tougher.”

The win comes a day after the Mustangs’ nearupset of No. 20 Wyoming Friday night, a dual meet they lost 23-15.

“We were right there [against Wyoming],”

Buckley said. “They’re known as being a tough, scrappy physical team and the vast majority of our guys matched that intensity, so that was good to see.”

The Mustangs had two opportunities to get pins in Friday’s meet, including one from J.T. Goodwin in the second-to-last match of the night, but just missed both of them. Pins in either of the bouts would have likely put Cal Poly on top for good.

Saturday, the Mustangs’ success began with two straight pins in the 141 and 149 bouts by freshman Colton Schilling and then by sophomore Jacob Leon.

“It always creates momentum,” Buckley said of the pins. “It’s exciting when you’re the next man up and your workout partner just got a pin before you. It’s motivation.”

Kastl later turned in another impressive performance to improve his season record to 7-3. This time, he showed off some of his resiliency to earn the win, overcoming a takedown late in the second period by Brown senior Ricky McDonald to get a takedown of his own for a 5-3 decision.

“I always want to go up in the first,” Kastl said.

“I’m better when I’m up, but my mentality was, ‘I’m gonna make this the hardest match this kid’s ever wrestled.’ So I never did feel out of it, and I knew it was going to come down to one more takedown because no one’s going to hold me down that long. But the kid was tough.”

Kastl is the No. 20 wrestler in the nation, one of the few seniors on this young Cal Poly team and one of the only ones with nationallevel experience.

“That’s why he’s the emotional leader of the team,” Buckley said. “He’s worked really hard and he’s focused on making the most of this last opportunity he has as a senior.”

The most thrilling performance of the dual meet came a match later, when Fiegener took the mat to face Bernstein in the 184.

“My teammate told me he’s an All-American, so when I was out there I felt like I couldn’t lose,” Fiegener said. “I had to get that one. He felt funky but I definitely feel I could beat him again.”

Fiegener was tied with Bernstein going into the third period when Buckley pulled him aside the mat.

“He told me, ‘more motion,’” Fiegener contin-

ued. “The kid wanted to scramble so I just tried to stick with the fundamentals in the third.”

It worked.

Fiegener got the takedown he needed to earn the decision, improving upon a rookie campaign as a true freshman in which he has built upon performances meet after meet, culminating in the win against the heralded Brown senior.

“Just seeing him steadily getting better and better is great,” Buckley said. “He does the right things. He’s coachable, he works hard, his conditioning has improved dramatically. It’s what you want to see.”

The Mustangs will look ahead to their next meet on Friday, Jan. 16 at 7 p.m., when they will host Air Force and hope to build on Saturday’s win.

“We’re coming on,” Kastl said. “We’ve had a saying at the beginning of the year that this is our year. Last year’s done and we’ve been really carrying it through. We’re the most underrated team in the NCAA we think. No one knows about us, but we’re starting to find our moves. Big points at the right time going into Pac-12 (matches).”