Here’s 5 things we learned from Penn State wrestling’s 1st dual loss in nearly 5 years
Penn State wrestlers are on a break this week for the Thanksgiving holiday, regrouping after something most of them have never had to deal with before in college — a dual meet loss.
The Nittany Lions’ 60 straight dual meet win streak came to an end Friday night in Tempe, Arizona, as the Sun Devils upset the nation’s top-ranked team 19-18. While the two teams split the bouts evenly, 5-5, Arizona State won the bonus-point battle, buoyed by a Penn State forfeit at 184 pounds.
“Loses are painful. Everyone of us is sick to our stomach right now,” assistant coach Cody Sanderson told the PA Sports Network after the dual. “But it’s part of the sport. Those guys came out and wrestled great. They wrestled better than we did tonight, and that’s really what it boiled down to — they wrestled better than we did, and they got the win.”
Here’s what we learned from Penn State’s first dual meet loss in nearly five years:
1. All good things must come to an end
Just as UCLA men’s basketball fell after 88 straight wins in 1974 in South Bend, Indiana, and UConn women’s basketball’s nearly three-season-long win streak was cut short on an overtime buzzer-beater in 2017 and Penn State women’s volleyball’s 109 match winning streak was snapped in 2010, so too did Penn State wrestling’s 60 straight dual streak.
The last time the Nittany Lions lost a dual meet was Feb. 15, 2015 at Oklahoma State. Before Friday, only sixth-year seniors Anthony Cassar and Shakur Rasheed, who were true freshmen redshirting at the time, knew what it was like to lose a dual as a Nittany Lion.
The streak ended nine duals short of tying Iowa’s modern-era record of 69.
The Hawkeyes’ win streak was broken with a 15-15 tie against Oklahoma State on Jan. 16, 2011. Iowa went on to win 15 more duals before recording a loss, leaving its unbeaten record at 84. Oklahoma State owns the all-time record of 76 consecutive dual meet wins from 1937-51. The Cowboys also have a pair of 69-match streaks coming from 1921-32 and 1996-99.
When asked previously about the streak, head coach Cael Sanderson and his wrestlers would insist their focus was on preparing for the NCAA tournament in March, not winning duals.
“Dual meets are important to us. It’s the one time you go head-to-head with each team,” Sanderson said in early February, prior to last season’s Ohio State dual. “But, ultimately, my goal as a coach is to be ready to go for the national tournament. That’s first and foremost. That’s what, in my mind, I was hired to do at Penn State. So that will always be No. 1.”
Wrestler Nick Lee echoed his coach’s sentiments at the time, saying the dual streak wasn’t something that was ever brought up or even thought about by the team.
However, the Nittany Lions have shown they do care about winning duals, from Jason Nolf “jokingly” telling heavyweight Nick Nevills no pressure, “Except you lose, we lose the streak and everything else,” when Lehigh had Penn State’s streak in jeopardy in 2017, to the excitement off the bench in Rec Hall in 2018 when Cassar’s upset win and another strong effort from Nevills kept the Buckeyes from doing the same.
But all streaks must some to an end at some point, and the most exciting things about that is the potential for a new one to start.
2. Penn State’s stars looked great — but needed someone else to step up
To nobody’s surprise, past national champs Vincenzo Joseph, Mark Hall and Anthony Cassar have so far looked very impressive.
Coming off NCAA finals losses last season, both Joseph and Hall have looked dialed in and focused for their senior seasons. Top-ranked Joseph has already earned a technical fall over a ranked wrestler in Navy’s then-No. 11 Tanner Skidgel, avenged that finals loss to Mekhi Lewis in the Bill Farrell freestyle competition, and just knocked off Arizona State’s No. 5 Josh Shields 7-4, outscoring him three takedowns to none.
For his part, No. 1 Hall has so far earned bonus points in all five bouts he’s wrestled this season, including an 11-3 major decision over ASU’s No. 8 Anthony Valencia. Reigning national champ Cassar was just a fraction of an inch from being the hero Friday night, nearly pinning fifth-ranked Tanner Hall, which would’ve given his team the improbable victory.
Two-time All-American junior Nick Lee has been a nice surprise for Penn State fans this season. With bonus points in five of six bouts so far this season — including a tech fall Friday night — he’s so far made the argument that he belongs in the same category as the other three. However, questions still remain at Penn State’s other six weight classes. True sophomore No. 3 Roman Bravo-Young has looked solid, but struggled Friday against No. 16 Josh Kramer in his first Arizona homecoming.
Penn State won all the matches it was favored in, but to win the dual, needed someone else to step up, and while sophomore Jarod Verkleeren was close at 149 pounds, it didn’t quite happen Friday night.
3. A dual loss doesn’t mean the Nittany Lions can’t win in March — but they have work to do
Despite the loss, the Nittany Lions’ ultimate goal — to win its ninth national championship in 10 years — is still on the table. However, Friday’s dual did expose Penn State’s weaknesses.
Joseph, Hall, Cassar and Lee are all finalist contenders at this point, and Bravo-Young has a good shot at making the podium again. Penn State is also banking on high production from sophomore Brady Berge at 157 pounds and Rasheed at 184. Neither has yet to take the mat this season, as Rasheed is recovering from off-season ACL surgery, and Berge from an apparent head injury sustained at U23 Worlds in October.
The other three weight classes — 125, 149 and 197 — are all works in progress.
At the beginning of the season, Sanderson said both 125 and 149 were still contested spots in the lineup, and after Verkleeren beat teammate Luke Gardner by just two points in a one-takedown match at the Black Knight Invitational, the coach said at least that 149 battle will continue.
Sanderson has also said that the coaching staff and trainers are still working with 197-pound graduate transfer Kyle Conel to get him back into wrestling shape, as an injury from last fall at Kent State has had him nearly a year off of competition, and almost deciding to leave the sport entirely.
“We’re not in a hurry, we’re not worried, Cody Sanderson told the PA Sports Network about Conel on Friday. “We know where he’s been before, and we just need to be patient with him as we get him back to where he’s capable of wrestling.”
Penn State is OK with being patient right now, waiting for Berge and Rasheed to get back to full health and for Conel to get back into shape. But to beat the likes of Iowa — which has all 10 starters ranked in InterMat’s poll — in March, Penn State will need all those guys to be at their peaks.
4. Nobody wins with a forfeit
Penn State got a lot of heat on social media Friday after forfeiting the 184-pound bout. That criticism is understandable, as doing so denied two-time national champ Zahid Valencia, a redshirt senior who has been a team leader for the past five years and a driving force behind getting the program to where it is today, the chance to wrestle in the biggest dual meet of his career.
Redshirt freshman Creighton Edsell, who has been holding down 184 so far this season in Rasheed’s stead, did not weigh in Friday due to a “late development,” reported the PA Sports Network. While Rasheed did weigh in, Cody Sanderson said the fifth-year senior has not yet been cleared for live action.
“We weighed him in because that’s what we needed to do. That’s the way a dual meet works,” Cody Sanderson said. “We had to put him on the scale. But we found out earlier today that the 184-pounder we traveled out here wasn’t going to be able to wrestle, so we were stuck. We wanted to put someone out there and let him go to work, but our hands were tied.”
As there is no media availability this week due to the Thanksgiving break, reporters have not yet gotten the opportunity to ask who all traveled with the team, and whether there was anyone else who could have possibly wrestled there.
But Cael Sanderson has previously said he’s not willing to throw somebody into the starting lineup who’s not ready to wrestle. And with Mason Manville taking an Olympic redshirt, the list of wrestlers ready to take on the top-ranked Valencia — without pulling any redshirts — is short, even if the dual would have been at home.
With the forfeit, Arizona State got an automatic six points — six points Penn State wasn’t able to match anywhere else in the lineup.
While the No. 1 team forfeiting a weight in a televised top-10 matchup is certainly not a great look, pushing a wrestler to compete before he’s physically ready would’ve been even worse.
5. Having football’s redshirt rule would make duals much more competitive
After Penn State’s loss, there was also social media clamor to bring back the National Dual Championships, to encourage teams to put more emphasis on duals, rather than saving everything for March.
But with the health and safety of wrestlers also of concern, there’s another potential solution — adopting the NCAA’s football rule that allows for players to compete in up to four games, to fill in for injured players or gain additional experience, without burning their redshirts.
Cael Sanderson brought up that concept himself, when asked ahead of the Black Knight Invitational whether they’d consider pulling some redshirts while guys like Joseph and Cassar simultaneously pursue their goals of making the Olympic team this season.
“You’re not going to burn a redshirt for a few matches, right?,” he said. “Those guys are ready to go. You never know what’s going to happen, but yeah, It would make no sense just to wrestle those guys for a few matches. If we had the football rule where you can wrestle four matches, that would be great, but we don’t have that.”
If wrestling did have that rule, Penn State could’ve potentially thrown in a true freshman such as Aaron Brooks or Donovan Ball, or even 174-pounder Carter Starocci. But at this point, Sanderson seems set on preserving those redshirts.
This story was originally published November 25, 2019 at 9:28 PM.
