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Penn State Wrestling regular season awards: Who’s the Nittany Lions’ MVP?

By Chris Snyder

ST LOUIS, MO - MARCH 20: Roman Bravo-Young of Penn State celebrates after beating Dayton Fixx of Oklahoma State in the 133lb weight class in the first-place match during the NCAA Division I Men's Wrestling Championship at the Enterprise Center on March 20, 2021 in St Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images)
ST LOUIS, MO - MARCH 20: Roman Bravo-Young of Penn State celebrates after beating Dayton Fixx of Oklahoma State in the 133lb weight class in the first-place match during the NCAA Division I Men's Wrestling Championship at the Enterprise Center on March 20, 2021 in St Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images) /
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Penn State Wrestling
Aaron Brooks of Penn State celebrates  (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images) /

MVP

Aaron Brooks
14-0

Ranked Wins
No. 4 Parker Keckeisen (UNI) decision 3-2
No. 16 Jonathan Loew (Cornell) major decision 15-3
No. 12 Kyle Cochran (Maryland) major decision 19-7
No. 5 John Poznanski (Rutgers) major decision 10-2
No. 2 Myles Amine (Michigan) decision 3-1
No. 17 Abe Assad (Iowa) decision 8-3
No. 9 Taylor Venz (Nebraska) major decision 14-4

You might be asking yourself “How on earth can anyone pick an MVP from this year’s Penn State Wrestling Team considering all four returning NCAA Champions went undefeated during the regular season?”

That is an excellent question and thank you for asking it, the fictional person I made up in my head!

And as I’ve stated a handful of times, that’s why I

get paid the big bucks

am contractually obligated to state my terrible takes on wrestling.

So in trying to determine this year’s regular-season MVP, let’s look at some numbers. First and foremost, no one on the Nittany Lion squad has more ranked wins this year than Aaron Brooks. Half of his matches this season featured a ranked grappler and three of them were against top 5 guys.

Secondly, take a look at Aaron’s bonus point percentage in his ranked matches. Of his seven matches he scored bonus points in four of them. This included major decisions against both the No. 5 and No. 9 ranked wrestlers in the nation.

And look, Roman Bravo-Young, Nick Lee, and Carter Starocci have been brilliant throughout the season. I would love to just split the MVP award equally among the four of them and then call it a day. But I honestly can’t do that.

Cael Sanderson and the Nittany Lion team have had a phenomenal season up until this point, and if I had to put all of my eggs into one basket to award an MVP, then it’s going to be Aaron Brooks every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Honorable Mentions:
Roman Bravo-Young
14-0

Nick Lee
14-0

Carter Starocci
15-0

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