Wrestling Wreport: Penn State Travels to Utah Valley

by Galen on Feb 10, 2012 5:04 PM EST in Wrestling

Frank Molinaro gets Utah Valley's only ranked wrestler Saturday. Hide yo' kids and hide yo' wife! (photo: BSD/Galen)

Utah Valley?!? Yes, Penn State will head across the country to Salt Lake City to battle the Wolverines of Utah Valley Saturday night at 9:00 p.m. (7:00 p.m. local time). It marks the final road dual of the year for Penn State with only a home dual with Pitt left on the regular season schedule.

It may sound like a strange team to schedule but it’s not. Penn State associate head coach Cody Sanderson started the Wolverine program back in 2003 and was the head coach for 3 seasons before joining brother Cael at Iowa State. Scheduling them was most likely a move by the coaching staff to help out a fledgling program. Unlike the world of football where schools never drop the sport, wrestling is always on the chopping block in administrators’ minds thanks to Title IX. There is no women’s wrestling program and wrestling teams don’t make any money so they often fall victim to budget cuts. A major wrestling program like Penn State can help out young programs by bringing them some national attention even if it’s in a small way. Every little bit helps the sport, so good for Penn State.

Match-ups, predictions, and more below.

Match-ups

Wt.	PSU	Utah Valley (class)
125	#8 Nico Megaludis	Colby Christensen (R-Fr.)
133	Frank Martellotti	Blake Mangum (R-Fr.)
141	Bryan Pearsall	Avery Garner (So.)
149	#1 Frank Molinaro	#14 Josh Wilson (Jr.)
157	#6 Dylan Alton	Napoleon Aniciete (Fr.)
165	#1 David Taylor	Ethan Smith R-(Fr)
174	#2 Ed Ruth	Monte Schmalhaus (So.)
184	#2 Quentin Wright	David Prieto (R-Fr. )
197	#12 Morgan McIntosh	Brian Chamberlain (Fr)
285	#6 Cameron Wade	Dustin Dennison (Fr)

History

None, this will be the first meeting between the two schools. Utah Valley is sitting at 5-7 but they just got done beating Stanford (25-10) and Cal Poly (19-17), a team that is a traditional wrestling school (UFC champ Chuck Liddell wrestled at Cal-Poly).

Predictions

While Cody might have had good intentions in scheduling his old school, he really isn’t doing them any favors on the mat. Utah Valley’s only ranked wrestler is #14 Josh Wilson who happens to fall at Frank Molinaro’s weight. I included the class of each Wolverine wrestler because, as you can see, they only have one wrestler that isn’t a sophomore or freshman. This won’t be pretty. I’m talking lock-the-kids-in-another-room kind of ugly. Bryan Pearsall and Frank Martellotti are in a losing funk right now but both of them will most-likely win and win with bonus. Quentin Wright gets a wrestler with only 5 wins all season, and Ed Ruth’s opponent is less than .500. Yeah, this is going to be a sweep.

Penn State 52 – Utah Valley 0

0 recs | 213 comments

Comments

If you get Fox College Sports Pacific, they will show this match next week

Wed. 2/15 6:30pm-8:30pm
Thur. 2/26 5:00pm-7:00pm

Elihu - February 10, 2012 reply

Maybe

there should be a women’s folkstyle college wrestling program that could allow women to transfer to freestyle after college. The NCAA could even increase schollies above their current 9.5 level (although that didn’t work for men’s volleyball). Oh well, just imagining the . . . possibilities (no mud either).

I think this will also be available via the interwebs (live — if the UV site doesn’t crash from the volume) and on the BIG (delay).

OlderBudweiser - February 10, 2012 reply

Naturally, PSU is catching grief for this,

but not for the matchup. They’re being blasted for not participating in the National Duals Tourney as the defending NCAA Champs.

Intermat takes Penn State’s side in this. I’m including the link because it’s part of their free content.

Link at ‘the link’. Hehehe.

I crack me up.

Pete the Streak - February 10, 2012 reply

Any reason in particular

that they are skipping the National Duals tourney?

Succss With Honor Always - February 10, 2012 reply

Cael

has numerous reasons, the article linked by Pete will clarify.

OlderBudweiser - February 10, 2012 reply

Have to say I myself am a little disappointed we aren't in National Duals

And honestly I think it’s fair for people to question Cael many, including a lot Penn State fans questioned Brands from the same thing last year.

That being said the NWCA is doing a terrible job of running this tournament. Not telling people where the finals are until a week before, yea that’s going to draw a ton of fans.

The fact is the NCAA should run have a dual meet tournament before Nationals, where the team champion is crowned instead of doing it at the individual tournament.

If it was a true NCAA title all teams would be there, and the fans would be interested. It would also add importance to the dual meets which lets be honest are just exhibitions at this point. That will start bringing fans around when they think matches are important.

This has been my gripe for years with Wrestling and it seems were slowly moving in that direction. But it’s pretty frustrating as much as I love this sport, it does a terrible job marketing itself. I’ll get off my soap box for now.

I think next year Cael should send an all back up team. They could probably do pretty well on their own.

psuwresfan - February 10, 2012 reply

I hate to disagree with wresfan since his knowledge of the sport is far superior to mine but here goes:

And honestly I think it’s fair for people to question Cael many, including a lot Penn State fans questioned Brands from the same thing last year.

Brands is still bashing the tournament format: "I don’t think the format is the end-all and the save-all, but I told Mike Moyer I would give him a shot at it. I’m not sure it’s the best thing.

"You’re chopping two weeks off the dual meet season," Brands said, "and you’re jamming 16 dates into two less weeks and it gets pretty crowded in there."

Also, I believe Cael’s points are valid. The NWCA does a lot of good things but to expect all the top teams to drop everything and support their “fundraiser” is a lot to ask. I suspect Executive Director Moyer is working hard to fund his own salary.

That being said the NWCA is doing a terrible job of running this tournament. Not telling people where the finals are until a week before, yea that’s going to draw a ton of fans.

I partly agree, yes they’re doing a bad job but some of it is poor communication. They needed to be upfront and state that they want one of the big programs that advance to host the event. Until this thing catches on and they can have the championship at a neutral site, they need the guaranteed big draw of large home crowd.

As for the NCAA running it, the President’s and ADs need to get on the stick to make it happen though I don’t know how wise it is. A dual championship sounds nice in theory because we’re accustomed to the team championship format of true “Team Sports” like basketball and volleyball. Instead of trying to duplicate March Madness wrestling needs to celebrate the difference of the sport and educate the fans on tournament scoring. Hell, the clowns at BGHP were acknowledging that the sport is about winning the championship tournaments not dual meets even after they beat Minnesota a couple of weeks ago. That’s a 180 from what they were claiming last year if you’re scoring at home.

Getting all teams involved in a tournament would take at least a grinding two weekends. Hypothetically, using the current 77 teams, you’d have 26 teams wrestling on the first weekend Thursday with 51 teams receiving first round byes, then, the round of 64 on Friday, 32 on Saturday then 16 on Sunday. You could do that at 8 sites, similar to Volleyball with the top seeds hosting. Of course, half the arenas would have conflicts with basketball. The following weekend would be at a predetermined site, round of 8 Friday, semis on Saturday and championship on Sunday. That may sound feasible but then ask the question: do you want to see Matt McDonough matched up with Zach Sanders in the individual tournament 2 weeks after they meet in the dual championship, which was 2 weeks after the met in the B1G tournament? Would it reward the best wrestler or simply the last survivor?

Like I said, celebrate wrestling for what wrestling is instead of trying to duplicate a basketball playoff format.

Frank O'Brien - February 11, 2012 reply

Instead of trying to duplicate March Madness wrestling needs to celebrate the difference of the sport and educate the fans on tournament scoring. Hell, the clowns at BGHP were acknowledging that the sport is about winning the championship tournaments not dual meets even after they beat Minnesota a couple of weeks ago.

I agree, the thing that makes wrestling so unique is the fact that it’s an individual sport AND a team sport at the same time. The dual meet and tournament formats are two different animals altogether and it makes the sport so much fun to watch.

As for BGHP, let’s lay off them a bit, they do a great job of promoting wrestling. You don’t have to agree with their posts, and I sometimes don’t, but at least they are a popular blog promoting our favorite sport. That isn’t a bad thing.

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