Ranking Cael Sanderson’s top 10 wins as Penn State Wrestling coach
By Chris Snyder
No. 9
February 14, 2021
Ann Arbor, MI
No. 3 Penn State 18, No. 2 Michigan 13
If Sanderson’s first win as head coach of Penn State makes the top ten, then clearly his 200th win was going to make it, right? And look, it would have been easy for me to cherry pick this one and simply say just that.
At the end of the day, this was an entertaining dual meet and one in which an inexperienced Penn State went on the road and defeated the No. 2 ranked team in the nation. You can read a detailed write-up of the results, my grades, and the MVP of the match, but here’s a quick summary.
In each of the Nittany Lions’ first three dual meets they had to unfortunately spot the opposing team six points as they didn’t have any able bodies to go at 125. Robert Howard changed that narrative as he made his Penn State debut. He proceeded to take care of business and win his match via a decision, thus providing Penn State with a 9 point swing.
All three of the top Nittany Lion wrestlers (Roman Bravo Young 133, Nick Lee 141, Aaron Brooks 184) won by decision, however none of them were able to grab any much needed bonus points.
Casual Penn State fans? Meet Carter Starocci. He stepped up to the plate in a difficult match against No. 2 Logan Massa at 174. The most thrilling match of the day resulted in Starocci coming away with a 7-1 decision in TB2 against Massa.
Starocci and Howard won the dual for Penn State in the end. If you flip any one of those matches then PSU loses.
Did I do enough to convince you this dual belongs in the top ten? Please?