Wrestling mailbag: Who will win Penn State’s pin race, Nolf or Nickal?
After officially kicking off its Big Ten season last weekend with contests against Northwestern and Wisconsin, Penn State wrestling enters the busiest part of its dual season.
With seven more conference duals — including Ohio State and Michigan — in a month’s time, we’re about to learn a lot more about what type of team Penn State has heading into March.
Let’s see what we have in this week’s mailbag:
Who do you believe will finish the season with more career pins, Jason Nolf or Bo Nickal?
One of the most exciting storylines this season for Penn State wrestling fans is the pin race between its two senior, two-time national champs.
The pair have been on fire so far this season. Although Nolf’s pin of Stanford’s Dom Mandarino in 5 minutes and 22 seconds at the Southern Scuffle made him Penn State’s all-time career pins leader with 54 pins, Nickal isn’t far behind with 51. Nickal also holds the edge so far this season, with 10 pins in 14 matches, to Nolf’s nine in 15.
Both Nolf and Nickal have been clear — every time they go out on the mat, they’re looking for the pin. So to answer the question of who might finish the season with more, I took a look at their remaining opponents.
Through the rest of the dual season, Nolf is set to hit five ranked wrestlers to Nickal’s three. Nolf will also likely have a tougher field when it comes to the Big Ten tournament, with nine other wrestlers ranked at 157 pounds in InterMat’s poll. Besides Nickal, just three other Big Ten wrestlers are ranked at 197 pounds. Nationwide, there also appears to be less depth at 197.
Even though the field might be a bit tougher for Nolf than Nickal this season, it’s certainly not out of the question for the Yatesboro native to put ranked guys on their backs. He already has pins over two ranked wrestlers in Bucknell’s Zach Hartman and Lehigh’s Josh Humphreys. However, No. 3-ranked Ryan Deakin and No. 11 Christian Pagdilao were able to keep him to major decisions.
Nolf and Nickal will likely both continue to put pins on the board this season, even as competition heats up. But with a little bit less competition in his weight class, my money is on Nickal to make up the three-pin difference and graduate as Penn State’s all-time leader in pins.
With Roman Bravo-Young’s third-place finish and arguably not his best college performance at the Southern Scuffle, do your expectations for him change for the second semester?
What was most concerning about the true freshman’s Southern Scuffle performance was not so much getting pinned by a top-10 wrestler in his weight class, but more so his sluggish performance against unranked wrestlers during the first day.
However, whether or not he was feeling under the weather, as some reports have suggested, fans should be encouraged by the way Bravo-Young was able to bounce back that next day.
Bravo-Young was able to put whatever was holding him back that first day behind him and rose to the challenge to take on Austin Gomez. Before getting thrown on his head and pinned, Bravo-Young was out to a quick 8-2 lead, and looking every bit the part of the wrestler most people think he can be.
After the disappointing finish to that match, Bravo-Young was able to shake off his first collegiate loss and finish the tournament strong. The way he handled that entire tournament showed a lot of maturity for the true freshman.
Having faced that adversity early, Bravo-Young, true to what he wrote on Instagram, “can only go up from here.”
At the beginning of the season, I thought Bravo-Young had a pretty good shot at becoming a lower-tier All-American, and I still feel that way. If anything, I’m a bit more confident in that, after having seen how he fought back in that tournament.
Lauren Muthler
Centre Daily Times