No. 1 Penn State Wrestling grades, MVP from throttling of No. 3 Iowa

No. 1 Nick Lee 6-4 decision over No. 2 Jaydin Eierman

Grade: A+

The Nittany Lions jumped out to a 7-0 lead on the night with Drew Hildebrandt and Roman Bravo-Young both winning their matches. Even though it was early in the dual, to me it felt like a critical juncture.

Would Nick Lee prove to the college wrestling world that his win over Eierman in last year’s NCAA Championship wasn’t a fluke and he’s simply better than everyone else at 141?

Or would Eierman come out on top and further push his rivalry with Lee to a new level?

Well with what transpired between these two elite wrestlers on Friday night, all I can say is that it was simply incredible.

Lee took a 4-2 lead into the third period and both grapplers started in the neutral position. Oh, and Nick also had a riding time advantage of 1:11. So for Eierman to have any chance to winning, he had to get a takedown AND whittle down Lee’s riding time to under a minute.

For obvious reasons Nick took his foot off of the pedal and chose to defend rather than taking any committed shots, knowing full well Eierman had to be the aggressor.

And with only 13 seconds remaining in the third period, Eierman feigned a shot and then ran around Lee’s defense to secure the takedown and ride Nick out for the rest of the period. Therefore dropping his riding time to below a minute and forcing sudden victory.

The Carver-Hawkeye fans were on their feet and one of the most exciting venues in all of college wrestling was rocking.

They sensed a huge win was about to happen.

And they got exactly that as Lee slide out the side of an Eierman shot and worked around to secure the takedown a full seven seconds into sudden victory.

Barbeque sauce!