UNIVERSITY PARK — A peek ahead at the next two months of the Penn State wrestling schedule and one will find numerous obstacles and opportunities for the Nittany Lions to test their mettle.
Four duals against Top 25 teams, three tough Big Ten opponents back-to-back- to-back, six grueling road trips including a 1,400-mile jaunt to the Midwest a week before No. 1 Iowa comes to Happy Valley.
For the No. 5 Lions (1-1, 0-1), who have wrestled in just two duals thus far and have been idle for nearly two weeks, they need some action to get them prepared for the meat of their schedule.
What better proving ground than a large individual tournament?
Penn State will test itself again in today’s Nittany Lion Open, which begins at 8:30 a.m. today in Rec Hall. The tournament should feature hundreds of wrestlers from around the country and will potentially draw a handful of the nation’s elite grapplers.
“We just look to make progress as the season goes along and that’s what we’re expecting to see out of our guys,” Penn State coach Cael Sanderson said. “This is a great tournament this weekend just because our guys get to compete. They get five or six matches in. We only have two matches right now. That’s a little unusual to be this late (in the season) and only have two matches. That’s just the way it worked out this year. But the more matches our guys get, the better our team will be.”
At this point last season, the Nittany Lions had already wrestled in five duals. To have just two matches on their resumes already almost a month into the season?
It’s not something Penn State wrestlers are used to, which is why they’ve been eagerly anticipating this tournament, if for nothing more to finally get back on the mats after a loss to Minnesota on Nov. 20.
“Last year the guys had a lot more matches than we did at the beginning of the year, so this is going to get us ready I think for when it comes time at the end of the season,” red-shirt freshman Sam Sherlock said.
And State Penn wrestlers will likely get quality bouts against top-tier talent.
As of Saturday, 17 ranked wrestlers have entered the event, not counting Penn State’s ranked athletes. That could change up to a few hours before the first bouts, begin however, depending on weigh-ins and late entrants or scratches.
Still, with four ranked wrestlers currently pegged to compete in each of th the 157-, 165-and 174- pound weight classes, those brackets could be the most entertaining, and challenging for the Nittany Lions’ Dylan Alton, David Taylor and Ed Ruth, who are No. 11, No. 1 and No. 2 at those weights, respectively.
At 157, Virginia Tech’s No. 5 Jesse Dong, Clarion’s No. 8 James Fleming and Maryland’s No. 16 Kyle John are signed up while Maryland’s No. 2 Josh Asper, Virginia Tech’s No. 14 Peter Yates and Buffalo’s No. 19 Mark Lewandowski will join Taylor, who has steamrolled both of his opponents so far this season at 165. Taylor won this tournament last year at 157 while Maryland’s Asper, a junior, won it at 165.
“Every weight is a little different,” Sanderson said. “But, we’ve had some very competitive weights here in the past with David beating some of the better guys, some of the top guys last year. It’s nothing new for him. He gets tested every day in here, when we have (assistant coach Casey) Cunningham and Ruth and Quentin (Wright) and Matt Brown and all of these guys around him. It’s nothing new for him.”
While Sherlock will be taking part in his second Nittany Lion Open, many Penn State wrestlers will be taking part in their first. While the majority of them aren’t strangers to long tournaments at the high school level, this will be totally different, Penn State fifth-year senior Frank Molinaro said.
Molinaro’s biggest piece of advice to his young teammates?
Rest as much as you can and when the opportunities present themselves to take it easy throughout the day, seize them.
“Since it’s like my 9,000th tournament, I just try to stay off my feet when I’m not wrestling and just make sure I get a good warm-up before my first match. Because you usually feel kind of cruddy your first match in a tournament,” Molinaro said. “A lot of them, I tell them not to get involved in (watching) the tournament. Don’t worry about who’s wrestling who or not even so much worry about yourself. Don’t even worry. Don’t get all excited about your teammates’ matches. Because it’s a long day, you have to kind of focus on yourself.”
It’s a good recommendation.
This tournament will go a long way in deciding where certain wrestlers fall on the team’s long-term depth chart. And Sanderson will be watching.
So far, 32 of Penn State’s 36 wrestlers are entered into today’s tournament, among them, veterans and rookies alike.
“That’s the challenging part of your regular season. You get one guy per weight. There’s no JV,” Sanderson said. “(The Nittany Lion Open) gives our second and third string guys a chance to compete, be in the same tournament as the best guys and it gives us a better idea where everyone is. So we’re watching everybody, helping everybody. There are still weight classes that are open to who’s going to be the long-term starter in those positions and this tournament goes a long way in deciding that.”
