No. 1 Penn State Wrestling travels to Iowa City this Friday for their highly anticipated matchup against the No. 3 ranked Iowa Hawkeyes.
Most of the time you can add the words “highly exciting” to the above sentence. However, after watching this year’s Michigan dual and witnessing Iowa’s strategy of “Let’s just stall for the first six minutes and 47 seconds, and then we’ll get down to actually wrestle” in last year’s dual at the Bryce Jordan Center, I’m not so sure about that.
What I am sure about are exactly three things:- There are some juicy matchups on paper- The Nittany Lions will be ready and they’ll bring high energy to the dual- Cael Sanderson is in search for his 200th career dual meet win But, before we look at the potential matchups, highlight several key matches, and slap down a prediction, let’s take a look at how you can tune into the dual this Friday.
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How to watch Penn State Wrestling vs. Iowa
Date: Friday, February 9th
Time: 9:00 p.m. EST
Where: Carver-Hawkeye Arena (Iowa City)
TV: B1GFREE Live Stream: FuboTV (FREE Trial)
Listen: Free via Lionvision at GoPSUsports.com Now, let’s turn to the potential matchups ahead of the action on Friday night.
Potential matchups
No. 1 Penn State (8-0) vs. No. 3 Iowa (10-1)
125 – No. 2 Braeden Davis (PSU) vs No. 7 Drake Ayala (IOWA)
133 – No. 6 Aaron Nagao (PSU) vs No. 20 Cullan Schriever (IOWA)
141 – No. 1 Beau Bartlett (PSU) vs No. 2 Real Woods (IOWA)
149 – No. 10 Tyler Kasak (PSU) vs No. 12 Caleb Rathjen or Victor Voinovich (IOWA)
157 – No. 1 Levi Haines (PSU) vs No. 5 Jared Franek (IOWA)
165 – No. 7 Mitchell Mesenbrink (PSU) vs No. 6 Mikey Caliendo (IOWA)
174 – No. 1 Carter Starocci (PSU) vs No. 7 Patrick Kennedy (IOWA)
184 – No. 6 Bernie Truax (PSU) vs Aiden Riggins (IOWA)
197 – No. 1 Aaron Brooks (PSU) vs No. 11 Zach Glazier (IOWA)285 – No. 1 Greg Kerkvliet (PSU) vs No. 29 Bradley Hill (IOWA)
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Penn State Wrestling vs. Iowa Prediction
If this dual meet starts out at 125, then the first seven matches could be very interesting to watch. Right off the bat you have an electric matchup between Braeden Davis and Drake Ayala.
Davis and Ayala do have two common opponents on the season; Michael DeAugustino and Brandon Kaylor. And interestingly enough, Ayala lost to both guys while Davis took down DeAugustino (5-1) and Kaylor (11-6) with relative ease.
Regardless of the transitive properties, both guys will be locked in and focused come match time. The next match to keep your eye on will be the bout between Aaron Nagao and Cullan Schriever. And while Schriever only has a “20” next to his name, he’s a dangerous guy on the mat.
The only reason he’s not ranked higher is because he’s only been in action for 10 matches on the year. Couple this with Nagao being sick and missing the Maryland dual and his loss last week to Nic Bouzakis (13-7), and this could be a huge match for his psyche. I’ve never once been confused with being an eternal optimist, but something tells me Nagao gets back on track this week. Next at 141 we have perhaps the biggest match of the dual meet. And in no way should it surprise you which one it is.
This past week Beau Bartlett sat alone at the top of the Intermat polls at 141 pounds for the first time in his career. And while rankings are nice, they don’t mean jack on the mat.
I expect the Bartlett/Woods match to be every bit as good as the Bartlett/Mendez match, however I see Woods getting the better of Beau late in the third quarter.
Real has to be fuming after losing a major decision to Michigan’s Sergio Lemley. And for as good as Woods can be, I just see him being laser focused to shake off the loss.
Both Caleb Rathjen and Jared Franek were seemingly cruising through the season with very few bouts where they were even pushed. But that has completely changed since Iowa started the Big Ten portion of the schedule. Rathjen has dropped two of his last four matches with losses to No. 1 Ridge Lovett (6-0) and No. 9 Kannon Webster (4-1 SV). And Franek has two losses in his last five matches at the hands of No. 4 Michael Blockhus (5-4) and No. 10 Will Lewan (3-2 TB1). Meanwhile both Tyler Kasak and Levi Haines look like they are getting better each time they step onto the mat. Which is why I think they will both prevail on Friday night. But neither match will be easy.
Far from it.
At 165, Mitchell Mesenbrink will be up against his second All-American wrestler this season. And Mikey Caliendo has been extremely impressive so far this year. Caliendo already has wins against No. 27 Blaine Brenner (19-4 & 5-1), No. 7 Patrick Kennedy (7-3 – he wrestled at 165 at the Soldier Salute), No. 16 Antrell Taylor (8-3), No. 32 Stoney Buell (9-4), and No. 20 Maxx Mayfield (21-5).
It will be up to Mesenbrink to keep pressure on Caliendo and smother him with his relentless energy. I predict a middle of the road score between the two and for Mesenbrink to prevail he will need to make sure Mikey doesn’t take control from the top position. Mitchell appeared to struggle a little last week from bottom against Bryce Hepner. And the remaining match of this dual to keep your eye on will be the Carter Starocci/Patrick Kennedy matchup. Carter did not at all look like himself last week when he took a 4-2 decision from Rocco Welsh. Hopefully this was just a one-off thing and he’ll be back to prime form this Friday. As for Kennedy, he was looking sharp in Big Ten matches which included a huge 5-1 win over No. 8 Edmond Ruth in Iowa’s dual against Illinois.
But No. 3 Shane Griffith make easy work of Kennedy with an 11-1 major decision the last time he was in action.
If Carter is anywhere near 100% then I don’t see this matchup being particularly close. Even if Kennedy brings his A+ game. However with wrestling, you just never know.
125 – No. 2 Braeden Davis (PSU) dec. over No. 7 Drake Ayala (IOWA) 7-5
133 – No. 6 Aaron Nagao (PSU) major dec. over No. 20 Cullan Schriever (IOWA) 12-3
141 – No. 2 Real Woods (IOWA) dec. over No. 1 Beau Bartlett (PSU) 4-1
149 – No. 10 Tyler Kasak (PSU) dec. over No. 12 Caleb Rathjen (IOWA) 10-5
157 – No. 1 Levi Haines (PSU) dec. over No. 5 Jared Franek (IOWA) 5-2
165 – No. 7 Mitchell Mesenbrink (PSU) dec. over No. 6 Mikey Caliendo (IOWA) 10-6
174 – No. 1 Carter Starocci (PSU) major dec. over No. 7 Patrick Kennedy (IOWA) 14-3
184 – No. 6 Bernie Truax (PSU) major dec. over Aiden Riggins (IOWA) 14-4
197 – No. 1 Aaron Brooks (PSU) major dec. over No. 11 Zach Glazier (IOWA) 10-2
285 – No. 1 Greg Kerkvliet (PSU) tech. fall over No. 29 Bradley Hill (IOWA) 16-1 Penn State 33 Iowa 3
MORE: Penn State’s Grades, MVP from Dual Meet Win Over Ohio State
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Education: Penn State University
Location: State College, PA
Even though he had no prior journalism experience, Chris has now covered Penn State Wrestling and Penn State Football for the past three years, including as the Penn State Wrestling Beat Writer for VictoryBellRings.com, part of the FanSided network.
And it's clear he also likes constant torture as he's been a PSU Basketball fan for way too long.
Several years back, Chris made the seamless transition from PGA Professional to computer programmer and thoroughly enjoys following and writing about all things related to Penn State sports during his spare time.
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