The dual meet portion of Linn-Mar's wrestling season is rapidly coming to a close, with a home Mississippi Valley Conference dual scheduled for Thursday night against Dubuque Senior and a final MVC dual slated for Feb. 4 at Cedar Falls.

In between those two duals lies the Mississippi Valley Conference Tournament, a 14-team slugfest scheduled for Saturday at Dubuque Senior. The Lions will enter the meet hoping for a top-five finish while also garnering as many individual place winners as possible. Class 4A second-ranked Iowa City West comes into the meet as the prohibitive favorite.

Linn-Mar wrestled nothing but duals last week. It started with a 51-18 MVC win over Cedar Rapids Washington last Thursday and finished with a 1-3 record at Saturday's Bob Siddens Dual Classic at Waterloo West. The Lions, only win at Waterloo was a 34-24 decision over host West, with losses to Mason City, Class 2A second-ranked Denver-Tripoli and New Hampton.

Linn-Mar won six of the 10 matches wrestled against Washington and picked up points from four Washington forfeits. Josh Pederson (140 pounds) and Mark Atwater (171) won their matches by fall, Joel Northrup (103) won by technical fall and Jeremy Sevrin (130) won by major decision.

Daily Johnson (145) went 4-0 at Waterloo, including wins by technical fall and major decision. Atwater and Mac Mahmens (285) each finished 3-1, with Mahmens recording three pins and Atwater one.

The week's results left the Lions with a 14-7 dual meet record heading into Thursday's meet against Senior.