Here are 3 takeaways from Penn State wrestling’s performance at the Big Ten Championships
Penn State wrestling walked out of the 2021 Big Ten Wrestling Championships with two individual titles and a second-place team finish. Junior Roman Bravo-Young took home the Big Ten title at 133 pounds, while sophomore Aaron Brooks did the same at 184 pounds.
The Nittany Lions hosted the event at the Bryce Jordan Center and are now less than two weeks away from the 2021 NCAA Wrestling Championships. They’ll have nine wrestlers competing at the event in St. Louis from March 18-20.
Let’s take a look at three takeaways from the Nittany Lions’ weekend at the Bryce Jordan Center.
1. Slow start at Big Tens spells doom for NCAAs
If Penn State had any chance of upsetting the heavily favored Iowa for the team title, it needed a strong start with a couple of upsets Saturday morning. Cael Sanderson and Co. were hoping they could get some from their pair of No. 11-seeded true freshmen — Robert Howard (125 pounds) and Beau Bartlett (149) — but both got knocked into the consolation bracket after their first matches. Not only did the Nittany Lions not win any upsets in the first round, they lost one when redshirt freshman Joe Lee fell in sudden victory to a wrestler he pinned earlier in the season.
Brady Berge, Carter Starocci, Michael Beard and Greg Kervliet stemmed the tide for Penn State in that first round, but in some ways the damage was already done. Lee struggled the rest of the tournament, finishing in eighth place as the sixth seed and Bartlett fell far enough that he was the lone Nittany Lion to miss out on qualification for NCAAs.
While the Nittany Lions were able to continue to pick up valuable team points in the consolation brackets, it wasn’t enough to compete with the Hawkeyes, who still had nine alive in the championship bracket after Session 1. Iowa eventually had six finalists to Penn State’s four, and four champions to Penn State’s two
Although Penn State always seems to do better at NCAAs than Big Tens, last weekend made clear that the Nittany Lions will have to significantly overperform to have a shot against the Hawkeyes.
2. Experience will pay off in long run for freshmen
While the youth in the Nittany Lions lineup was unable to deliver early on in the tournament, it should pay dividends for the team in the long run. Experience at the level the freshmen faced last weekend is difficult to replicate no matter how good of a wrestling room they’re training in.
The Big Ten Championships marked the first time for six of Penn State’s wrestlers that they’ve faced that level of competition and pressure on the collegiate scale. Learning how to handle that pressure on the fly and having the opportunity to use those experiences to improve could be even more important for those six freshmen who will remain freshmen next year due to the NCAA’s ruling that this year will not count toward athletes’ eligibility clock.
Essentially, this is a free shot for them to grow and learn without ruining their chances at finding some of the same success their peers from the past have found. The benefit may come even sooner for the five who qualified for NCAAs. They now have had experience in a high-stress environment where they had to wrestle multiple times per day — a scenario that will be replicated at a larger scale in St. Louis. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the likes of Howard, Lee, Starocci, Beard and Kerkvliet improve on their performances now that they have the knowledge they attained at Big Tens.
3. PSU has the potential for 3 — or even 4 — national champs
One of those five freshmen may even walk out of NCAAs as a champion if all goes his way. Starocci at 174 pounds, along with senior Nick Lee at 149 pounds, Brooks at 184 pounds and Bravo-Young at 133 pounds all showed they have what it takes to take home their first career individual NCAA Championship next week.
Brooks is most well-positioned to earn first place because of his talent and the lack of true challengers for him at 184. He’ll face tough competition from two ACC competitors in North Carolina State’s Trent Hidlay and Virginia Tech’s Hunter Bolen, but he’s shown to be a step above the rest in the most talented conference in the country.
Bravo-Young has a similar opportunity after already defeating Iowa’s Austin DeSanto to win at Big Tens, but he’ll face a wrestler at — or above — his level at NCAAs. Oklahoma State’s Daton Fix has been dominant this season, earning bonus points in eight of his nine victories — including four falls and two technical fouls — on his way to a 9-0 record. A matchup between the two will be highly anticipated.
Lee finished second at Big Tens but seems destined for a rematch of the conference championship match in the NCAA title match. He and Iowa’s Jaydin Eierman faced off in a tight bout Sunday night and will have the chance to do the same in less than two weeks. The close bouts at Big Tens showed Eierman, Lee and third-place finisher Sebastian Rivera all still have legitimate shots at the national title.
Starocci has the most difficult path to a title, as Iowa’s Michael Kemerer had little issue putting the Nittany Lion away with a 7-2 decision in the championship bout. But the Big Ten Freshman of the Year has the talent to make it difficult to completely count him out at NCAAs.
