Penn State Wrestling Fans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here we are again at the end of another great wrestling season. Each year whips by so we have to slow down for a minute and reflect on the past season before we make the push into the freestyle season, recruiting, and planning out the next college season. This will be the final update of the collegiate season so we will recap some of the historic moments from this year.
To start with a couple weeks ago we hosted the Big Ten Tournament in the Bryce Jordan Center. We broke our school record for points scored (184) while winning the team title and having 7 individual champions to go with that. We also qualified the other 3 guys taking 10 guys to the national tournament
again. After the Big Ten Tournament we had everybody healthy and ready to go into the NCAA tournament as that is always the goal coming out of a brutal tournament. The guys did an amazing
job once again with many new records broken.
Before getting into the stats of the NCAA Tournament, it is appropriate to recognize this team for setting a new dual meet win record of 86 straight wins which is 6 years straight. They also outscored their opponents 630-39 in dual meets and won their 6th straight dual meet championship. In the Big Ten finale the indoor attendance record was once again broken in the Bryce Jordan Center at 16,006 people.
Now to get into some of the amazing things this team did at the NCAA tournament. This was the 5th straight title for Penn State which is the first time that has been done in school history with 4 in a row being the record before. With the 5th straight that makes it 13 of the last 15 titles for PSU. This team set a new scoring record for the 3rd straight year at 181.5 points, scored 40.5 bonus points(new school
record), had 4 Undefeated NCAA Champions(first time in NCAA history a school has had 4 undefeated NCAA champions), sent 6 guys to the finals(ties an NCAA record), had 8 All-Americans all in the top 4, Cael coached his 46th National Champion(most for a coach in NCAA history), and amazingly these
guys averaged 10.56 points a match which is far above the rest of the competition. When people talk about exciting wrestling this is a team that really lets it rip out there even in the National Tournament and
that is why they were able to score the bonus points they did. There are times where that pace and getting after guys does not always score points, but it gets guys tired and earns stalling points like we saw for 2 of our guys in the finals.
Even with all these great accomplishments you always feel for the guys who did not reach their goals, so it is a double-edged sword type of thing. It was an awesome year, and 4 guys reached their ultimate college goal of winning an NCAA title but 6 other starters and 20 other guys on the team did not necessarily get what they wanted. With that you go back to work and try to help those guys learn and grow so that they can reach their goals next year and beyond. There were a lot of great lessons learned throughout the year and in the post season and that is just more information to help to continue to improve and be better for what is ahead.
In closing we are really happy for Levi being able to go out on the top of the podium and really appreciate what he has meant to this program over the last 4-5 years. He has been awesome and we look forward to watching him continue to kick butt in freestyle. With that being said, we are also really excited about the guys we have coming back next year, the guys that redshirted, the incoming guys, and the guys we have committed in the next class. The feeling was there were a lot of points left on the board at the NCAA tournament so that is exciting.
Thank you for all the continued support- you guys rock!
GO LIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
