Penn State wrestling mailbag: Should Oklahoma State or Penn State be the No. 1 dual team?
With its final dual in the books, Penn State wrestling is now looking ahead to the postseason with the Big Ten tournament March 9-10 and NCAAs March 21-23.
It was an impressive dual season for the Nittany Lions, their fourth consecutive without a loss. Penn State fans watched as their Nittany Lions thumped their rival Buckeyes, Jason Nolf’s playbook continued to evolve, and an exciting new talent in true freshman Roman Bravo-Young was debuted.
But now, the real fun begins.
As the Nittany Lions are busy preparing to win their eighth national title in the past nine years, let’s see what we have in this week’s mailbag:
Does Oklahoma State have a better case to be ranked No. 1 in the dual team standings than Penn State?
Although Penn State might be the better team at the end of the day, the argument can certainly be made that Oklahoma State put together a more impressive dual season.
I don’t know all the factors or criteria that go through a voter’s head in deciding to put one team over another in the NWCA coaches poll. But if the question is which team had the tougher schedule — then it’s hard to beat Oklahoma State.
The Cowboys ended their season at 15-0, with nine wins over opponents ranked in the latest coaches poll. Three of those nine — Iowa (No. 3), Missouri (No. 5) and Minnesota (No. 8) — are in the top 10.
For their part, the Nittany Lions beat six currently ranked opponents. They also wrestled three top-10 opponents in Michigan (No. 4), Ohio State (No. 6) and Nebraska (No. 7).
But when it comes to margin of victory, Penn State beat its top-10 opponents by a combined margin of 52, to Oklahoma State’s 33. But with only one common opponent overall — in a Lehigh team that was riddled with injuries when it faced Penn State — it’s hard to truly tell which team had the better season.
That, to me, is all the more reason to bring back the National Duals Championship.
Should guys be penalized with lower seeds for missing matches, regardless of the reason?
No, not unless the NCAA changes the structure to make duals matter more.
Of course everyone wants to see the big matchups, and most were understandably disappointed when Iowa’s Spencer Lee and Northwestern’s Sebastian Rivera didn’t get to wrestle again, when Penn State’s Vincenzo Joseph sat on the sideline against Wisconsin’s Evan Wick, or any of the other highly touted matchups that never happened this year.
However, in the existing structure where everything comes down to the NCAAs, it’s hard to penalize a guy for wanting to preserve his body for the postseason, to miss a match for a weeding or a funeral, or anything else that comes up. The wrestling season is long and arduous, and often tough on the athletes’ bodies. What is the advantage of wrestling someone who’s not 100 percent midway through the season, risking an injury and not have them at the top of their game come March?
As it stands, it makes sense for wrestlers — and their coaches — to want to preserve their bodies to set them up for their best shot at a national title.
If the NCAA does want to attach more weight to regular-season duals, however, punishing wrestlers with lower tournament seeds for sitting out matches could be an effective way to do it.
What do you think the odds are that Roman Bravo-Young and Brady Berge end up as All-Americans this season?
Headed into the postseason, Penn State’s two starting freshmen are two of the biggest question marks. Although both Bravo-Young and Berge have shown a lot of promise in their young careers, the former hasn’t had the chance to wrestle too many highly ranked opponents, and the other only wrestled about half the dual season
A lot will be learned about both these wrestlers come Big Tens. But as it is now, with limited information on how either stack up with the bests in their weights, I’ll give Bravo-Young about a 75 percent chance and Berge 67 percent.
Bravo-Young (No. 10 in the most recent coaches poll) is in one of the toughest weight classes in the country at 133 pounds and, to place in the top eight for All-America status, he will have to place higher than the likes of former 2017 NCAA finalist Ethan Lizak and Austin Gomez — whom he lost to by fall earlier in the season. Yet the thing will Bravo-Young is that he has that “X-factor,” so to speak, with cat-like quickness and keen athletic ability.
Even with all the talent loaded into the 133-pound weight class, the true freshman certainly has the ability to mix things up and send some big names home early.
Berge might be in a bit weaker of a weight class, but his recent streak of five missed duals is somewhat concerning. But ranked No. 11 in the coaches poll, he isn’t sitting too far out of All-America territory, and he lost to No. 6 Mitch Finesilver by only a riding time point at the Southern Scuffle.
Both will have some work to do to become All-Americans, but as we’ve learned over the past several years, betting against Penn State at the NCAA tournament is a surefire way to lose money.
This story was originally published February 25, 2019 at 9:49 PM.
