Penn State Wrestling: Bold predictions for the NCAA Championships

Bold Prediction – No. 4

Roman Bravo-Young, Nick Lee, Carter Starocci, Aaron Brooks, and Max Dean will all be NCAA Champions

If I were to predict Roman Bravo-Young is going to repeat as champion then obviously it wouldn’t be bold. Or if I said the same thing about Nick Lee or Aaron Brooks. Or if I said a combination of three of them will win titles.

But when I say all five guys will finish the tournament in the middle of the mat with their hand raised and their opponent devastated. That’s a pretty darn bold prediction.

This would also virtually lock up the national title for the Nittany Lions, assuming Drew Hildebrandt, Beau Bartlett, Brady Berge, and Greg Kerkvliet find various levels of success as well.

It sounds crazy, but Penn State Wrestling and Cael Sanderson have already pulled off the seemingly impossible feat of crowning five individual champions in one NCAA Championship. This happened in the 2017 NCAA’s in St. Louis where Zain Retherford, Jason Nolf, Vincenzo Joseph, Mark Hall, and Bo Nickal won their finals matches and the Nittany Lions won the team title going away with 146.5 points.

The next closest team was 36.5 points back.

And while this year’s team is the best in the nation and the odds-on favorite to win the team title, they aren’t the same as the dominant team from 2017.

The difference between RBY and Daton Fix is razor-thin.

Same goes for Nick Lee and Jaydin Eierman and Aaron Brooks and Myles Amine. When matches turn into low-scoring affairs with little room for errors, the results can be decided essentially by a coin flip.

However the 2021-2022 Nittany Lion team has the best coach in the nation, they have the best wrestlers competing against each other in the wrestling room, and they have the belief in themselves that they can do whatever it takes to be a champion.

And this is why this prediction is going to happen.