With a little over a month remaining in the 2023-2024 regular season, wrestling fans watched and learned quite a bit from the copious amount of dual meets that went down over the past week.
The Big 10 held multiple inter-conference duals dating back to last Tuesday, and showcased great matchups such as #1 Penn State vs #11 Michigan and #6 Nebraska vs #9 Minnesota. #3 Iowa and the Purdue Boilermakers squared off on Friday night, which highlighted a #1 vs #2 bout at 125-pounds between Iowa’s Drake Ayala and Purdue’s Matt Ramos.
#5 Oklahoma State continues to rack up wins and keep an 8-0 undefeated record, and have all but crushed expectations so far into the 2023-2024 season. Six of the eight dual victories for the Cowboys have been against top-25 ranked teams, those being against #17 Lehigh, #19 Oklahoma, #8 NC State, #15 Pitt, #21 West Virginia, and now #16 Oregon State.
Here are the biggest takeaways from This Week In Wrestling:
Nittany Lions Stay Untouchable
Before the 2023-2024 season began, wrestling fans continued to speculate about the star power of the Penn State lineup and how they truly have a chance to be the best team in the history of NCAA Wrestling.
After hearing the unfortunate news regarding returning All-American Shayne Van Ness and his ACL tear, those speculations started to deteriorate due to the Nittany Lions being forced to start one of three redshirt freshmen at 149-pounds.
However, like the rest of the first-year starters for Penn State, Tyler Kasak has filled into that role perfectly and has yet to be beaten by anyone other than his own teammate.
To put Penn State’s dominance in perspective, Mat Scouts informed the wrestling world how unique and good this team actually is.
In less than two weeks the Nittany Lions will host the #7 Ohio State Buckeyes in Rec Hall for a Big 10 showdown, and then travel to Carver Hawkeye Arena to take on #3 Iowa in the most anticipated dual meet of the 2023-2024 NCAA regular season.
Little Rock Comes Up BIG
In one of the cooler stories of the season so far, Little Rock posted a massive upset over #24 Arizona State by a 18-15 score.
For a program that just started in 2019, it is awesome to see wrestling continue to grow down south and especially in Arkansas. Little Rock has been very close to upsetting ranked teams earlier on in the season, and have great wins over Drexel, Lock Haven, and now Arizona State.
Half of the Little Rock starting lineup is ranked in the top-30 of their weight classes, which is headlined by #7 Nasir Bailey at 133-pounds and #10 Stephen Little at 197.
Little Rock now improves to 10-4 on the regular season with six dual meets to go, and have already doubled their most wins in program history in a dual season.
In the next two weeks, the Trojans will head west to face Pac-12 opponents in #16 Oregon State, #20 Stanford, and #25 Cal Poly. It will be very interesting to continue following this momentum-filled team who has a real chance to win at least one of those matchups.
125-Pound Madness
Three months into the season with less than two to go, 125-pounds is just as unconvincing as it was to begin the season. We have seen six different wrestlers hold the #1 ranking, meaning every other week someone new holds the #1 spot.
It will change once again, as Purdue’s #8 Matt Ramos defeated Iowa’s #1 Drake Ayala in a narrow decision during the Iowa/Purdue dual meet this past weekend.
The changing of rankings does not stop at the top either, as there were a slew of upsets at 125 this past week and obviously weeks prior.
True Freshman and now #3 Braeden Davis of Penn State continues to stay undefeated after winning a close bout over #17 Michael DeAugustino of Michigan. Davis jumped all the way up to #3 from #14 in this week’s FloRankings, which just proves how uncertain this 125-pound weight class truly is. If I were to predict the national champ at 125, it would be Davis at this moment solely based on his consistency of beating top-25 ranked opponents.
Tragedy in Pittsburgh
There are many different ways teams can lose a dual meet, but none worse than the outcome in the Arizona State/Pitt dual on Sunday afternoon.
After a back-and-forth war through nine weights, Arizona State trailed 20-14 into the last bout between #5 Colton Schutlz and #10 Dayton Pitzer. Pitzer had his shoulder separated more than one time during that final bout, and tried his best to battle through until being forced to injury default in the third period.
With the injury default, Arizona State and Schultz would earn six team points and tie the Panthers at 20 points a piece and send the final decision into criteria.
Criteria E states: The team having accumulated the greater number of points for falls, defaults, forfeits, or disqualifications shall be declared the winner.
Since there were no falls for either team, Arizona State was granted the criteria point for the injury default at 285-pounds and therefore won the dual meet. Brutal…
What’s Next?
Notable Duals:
#5 Oklahoma State vs. #23 Northern Iowa – 1/26
#7 Ohio State vs. #11 Michigan – 1/26
#2 Missouri vs. #21 West Virginia – 1/26
#8 NC State vs. #15 Pittsburgh – 1/26
#4 Iowa State vs. #19 Oklahoma – 1/26
#3 Iowa vs. Illinois – 1/26
#16 Oregon State vs. Little Rock – 1/26
#5 Oklahoma State vs. #4 Iowa State – 1/27
#9 Minnesota vs. #13 Rutgers – 1/27
#19 Oklahoma vs. #23 Northern Iowa – 1/27
#2 Missouri vs. #14 Cornell – 1/28
