When the Penn State wrestling team blew out the rest of the field in last year\u2019s NCAA tournament, the Nittany Lions gave the sport something it had never seen before with a record 177 points.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t look now, but the guys from State College, Pa., are on pace to possibly break that record this weekend at Rocket Arena.<\/p>\n
After the first day of action at this year\u2019s NCAA tournament, the Nittany Lions have 40.5 points, which is one point better than last year\u2019s first-day pace of 39.5 points that eventually led to a tournament-record 177 points.<\/p>\n
Granted, Coach Cael Sanderson\u2019s team \u201conly\u201d went 18-2 on the first day of action March 19, which isn\u2019t quite as dominating as last season\u2019s 20-0 mark on the first day. Regardless, the Nittany Lions are on pace to once again blow out the rest of the NCAA field and potentially earn All-American status for all 10 of the wrestlers they brought to Cleveland this weekend.<\/p>\n
Heading into the second day of action, Penn State has eight of its 10 wrestlers in the quarterfinal round. Piling up bonus points via major decision, technical fall or pin, the Nittany Lions have 40.5 points, well ahead of second-place Nebraska (27), third-place Iowa (25.5), fourth-place Oklahoma State (25) and fourth-place Ohio State (23).<\/p>\n
Day 2 of the tournament begins at noon with quarterfinals and consolation rounds, with semifinals scheduled to begin at 8 p.m.<\/p>\n
Penn State entered the tournament with seven wrestlers seeded No. 1 in their respective weight classes. All of them are in the quarterfinal round, with most of them notching one or more wins via bonus points, including:<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Luke Lilledahl, who improved to 23-0 with a decision and major decision at 125;<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Marcus Blaze, who improved 24-1 with a pair of 17-2 technical falls at 133;<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Braeden Davis, who won his opener, 2-0, but lost his next match, 9-4 at 141;<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Shayne Van Ness, who improved to 24-0 with a decision and technical fall at 149;<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0PJ Duke, who improved to 22-1 with a decision and major decision at 157;<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Mitchell Mesenbrink, who improved to 25-0 with a tech fall and a major decision at 165;<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Levi Haines, who improved to 24-0 with a tech fall and a pin at 174;<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Rocco Welsh, who improved to 23-0 with a major decision and tech fall at 184;<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Josh Barr, who improved to 22-0 with a major decision and tech fall at 197; and<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Cole Mirasola, who went 1-1 with one decision win and one decision loss.<\/p>\n
Six Penn State wrestlers enter Day 2 with undefeated records.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, fourth-place Ohio State has all 10 of its wrestlers still in contention for top-eight podium positions. But after going 9-1 in the first round, the Buckeyes took a lot of hits in the Round of 16 by going 4-5.<\/p>\n
Ohio State\u2019s quarterfinalists are Ben Davino at 133, Jesse Mendez at 141, Brandon Canon at 144 and Carson Kharchla at 144.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Penn State wrestling team blew out the rest of the field in last year\u2019s NCAA tournament,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,2662,451,3,6454,6339,99,452,453],"class_list":["post-534089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-college-sports","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-ohio","tag-ohio-state","tag-sports","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}