2019 Big Ten Wrestling Championship

B1G Preview: What Does Penn State Have To Lose And Gain This Weekend?

B1G Preview: What Does Penn State Have To Lose And Gain This Weekend?

How will the Big Ten championships affect Penn State heading into the NCAA tournament in Pittsburgh?

Mar 5, 2019 by Wrestling Nomad
B1G Preview: What Does Penn State Have To Lose And Gain This Weekend?
With seven national titles in eight years, Penn State is hegemonic in the wrestling world. But they've only won one conference tournament in the past four years, a combination of the size of the event and that their energies often seem more focused on qualifying than anything.

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With seven national titles in eight years, Penn State is hegemonic in the wrestling world. But they've only won one conference tournament in the past four years, a combination of the size of the event and that their energies often seem more focused on qualifying than anything.

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Now that pre-seeds have been released, we've got a much better idea of what the championships round matches look like. As such, we're going to do breakdowns for Penn State, Iowa, Ohio State, and Michigan.

Starting off with PSU, these are going to focus on what each wrestler's season has looked like, where they fall in the bracket, and how they can improve their seed this weekend in Minnesota. Remember that the tournament starts on Saturday morning and runs through the semis that night.


125 Devin Schnupp: 6-14

The goal for Schnupp is to try to qualify. As the 12-seed, he opens against Travis Piotrowski of Illinois, the same Piotrowski that pinned him in just over a minute in the dual. Now, that puts him against the loser of the 4/13 match in the consis, a winnable one against Shane Metzler of Rutgers. After that though he'd have the loser of the 3/6, so either Drew Mattin or Sean Russell. Then he gets dropped into the labyrinth that is the "9th place bracket," at which time all bets are off.

Since Cael Sanderson took over in the 2009-10 season, the only year PSU did not get a qualifier at 125 was last season. The year before they scored zero team points when Nick Suriano forfeited out of the tournament. From 2012-2016, they had an AA every year, with Nico Meglaudis finishing 2, 2, 3, 1 and Jordan Conaway placing eighth in 2015 while Megaludis was redshirting.


133 Roman Bravo-Young: 17-2

Everyone knows that 133 is the deepest weight in the country with the most possible outcomes, and that starts this weekend in Minneapolis. He has two ranked wins heading into the postseason, over Sean Nickell in the third place match at the Southern Scuffle and against Luke Pletcher in the Ohio State dual.

With all the variance at this weight, he can probably push himself into a seed as high as #6, depending on how EIWAs and Big 12s go. He'll get a rematch with Luke Pletcher in the quarters, one he won in tiebreakers in the dual. After that would be Stevan Micic for the first time, since RBY did not wrestle in the Michigan match. A win there might be out of the question, but wrestling for third isn't. We shouldn't be surprised if RBY works himself into an All-American seed.


141 Nick Lee: 24-1

Most of the country probably expected a jump out of Nick Lee this season, and boy did it come. At this time last year, he was 22-4 and ranked 8th with a 3.19 dominance score against D1 competition. Now, he’s 24-1, ranked second and has a 4.0 dominance score against D1 guys. The dominance score from last year is even a little misleading since he was facing a lower level of competition before his redshirt was pulled.

One of Nick Lee’s losses last year was 12-7 to Yianni at the Binghamton Open. Lee gave up four takedowns and a reversal in that one, but both are totally different wrestlers now. Either way, getting a conference title would put him on the opposite side of the defending national champ and position Lee to make a finals run.

 

149 Brady Berge: 16-2

As expected, Berger landed in the #6 spot for the pre-seeds. That puts him against Pat Lugo in the quarters, a match that everyone in the sport's two largest fanbases should circle. Berge has three ranked wins, which will come in handy come time for NCAA seeding. But beating Lugo is the type of thing that can vault him into the Top-10 seeds and push him that much closer to giving the Nittany Lions All-American type points in a couple weeks.


157 Jason Nolf: 23-0

There are just two more tournaments left in Jason Nolf's career, which should probably make us sad as viewers of the sport and happy for and 157 pounder with eligibility left. He's beaten Berger, he's beaten Deakin, and he's beaten Pantaleo. The question isn't if, but by how much.

He stands at 13 pins in 23 matches, which has him nipping at Nickal's heels in the Hodge race. His current average match ends in 4:41, which means the typical one never makes it to the third period. Will he do that more than once this weekend? Probably.


165 Vincenzo Joseph: 21-0

Cenzo getting the one seed means he'll only have to get through one of Evan Wick or Alex Marinelli in the finals, but it also means yet another match against a game semifinalist. The winner of the Isaiah White/Logan Massa quarterfinal will be Joseph's opponent on Saturday night.

In four matches against White between high school and college, Joseph has scored just one takedown, and that was in overtime of last year's NCAA quarterfinals. As for Massa, Cenzo beat him in sudden victory in this year's dual, by one point at Big Tens last year, and by one point at NCAAs two years ago. He did also have a dominant 12-3 win in the 2018 dual.

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174 Mark Hall: 23-0

Mark is the favorite to win his second Big Ten title, but will have a perpetually difficult foe in Myles Amine in the finals. He'll also need to once again take out Mikey Labriola in the semis, but Hall's proficiency on top should carry him in those matches no matter if they frustrate him from neutral.

Really the only thing Hall can do is hold on to his 1 seed for NCAAs. That puts him in a similar position as a few of his teammates, but Hall has been wrestling in big matches his whole life.


184 Shakur Rasheed: 16-0

Despite missing six of the nine conference duals, Rasheed wound up being pre-seeded second. There is perhaps no wrestler in the entire tournament more intriguing than Rasheed. He injects another returning All-American into the weight, although he was up at 197 a year ago.

With an 82% bonus rate, he can put up massive points here, but he's only got two ranked wins, plus his win over Hunter Bolen in the Scuffle finals. But more than the team points he can accrue, he can put himself in position to get a Top-4 seed in Pittsburgh. Obviously a win over Myles Martin shakes up the whole weight, but even beating Taylor Venz in the semis gives him placement over Cash Wilcke and Emery Parker, as well as possibly putting him opposite side of Martin at NCAAs.


197 Bo Nickal: 22-0

The Hodge favorite strolls into conference weekend with 15 pins in 22 matches, and a 95% bonus rate. He's the most dominant wrestler in the country and could pin his way through Big Tens. He's ending matches in an average of 3:36, so every time he takes the mat you can expect him to end it before the middle of the second period.

Nickal is looking for his third Big Ten title and has scored 58.5 career team points at these conference championships. He's 9-1 career at Big Tens with five bonus point wins.


285 Anthony Cassar: 21-1

While Cassar may be attempting to get a sixth year of eligibility, if this was his final season in Happy Valley he's certainly made the most of it. He's ranked #3 going into the postseason and has just one loss on the season, to Derek White in the Southern Scuffle finals. Cassar is a major threat to make both the conference and NCAA finals.

Cassar is phenomenal on his feet, possibly even better than Gable Steveson, at least statistically. He has 102 takedowns this season, and based on this breakdown from the inimitable LemonPie is scoring a takedown once every 45 second of time spent in neutral. Aside from the White match and three bouts where he took his guy down and pinned them right away, he has three or more takedowns in every match this season.