Penn State Wrestling’s top 25 dual meets in the Cael Sanderson era
By Chris Snyder
Breaking down the top 25 regular season dual meets for Penn State Wrestling under the Cael Sanderson.
The Cael Sanderson era has brought unprecedented success to the Penn State Wrestling program.
Pretty self explanatory, right?
So with that, let’s jump into it!
Here are the top 25 regular season dual meets for Penn State Wrestling under Cael Sanderson
No. 25
November 15, 2009
University Park, PA
Bloomsberg 15, No. 15 Penn State 23
You can’t get to 200+ career dual meet victories without first getting to one, right?
Well, in this case it was really Sanderson’s 45th career dual meet victory as a collegiate head coach. More importantly, though, this was his first at the helm of the Nittany Lions.
Sanderson inherited an experienced wrestling squad going into the 2009-2010 season, and after coming off a defeat on the road at Lehigh, Penn State Wrestling took on another bus-distance opponent, Bloomsberg, in the friendly confines of Rec Hall.
Over 4,000 Penn State fans packed Rec Hall to witness the magic of a Cael Sanderson coached team first-hand. They weren’t disappointed.
Aided by victories from each of Penn State Wrestling’s three All-American grapplers (Frank Molinaro 149, Cyler Sanderson 157, and Dan Vallimont 165), the Nittany Lions built an early lead over Bloomsburg (14-9).
The fighting Huskies weren’t throwing in the towel, though. Bloomsburg took both the 174 and 184 matches and grabbed the lead (15-14) for the first time all day.
PSU’s Clay Steadman fired up the crowd with a decision victory at 197 and No. 20 Cameron Wade blew the roof off Rec Hall by pinning his opponent at heavyweight.
Things weren’t easy during Sanderson’s inaugural season, as evident with the tough win against unranked Bloomsburg. The Nittany Lions would go on to finish 13-6-1 on the season.