Penn State Wrestling: Nittany Lions crush Rutgers 33-8 in their final road dual
By Chris Snyder
The No. 1 Penn State Nittany Lions dominant in 33-8 win against No. 23 Rutgers
The Penn State Wrestling Team finished up the last leg of their road trip in the Big Ten as they traveled to Piscataway to tackle Rutgers on Friday evening. The Nittany Lions previously took down Ohio State 29-9 and waxed Indiana 35-8 in the wrestling action from last weekend.
Rutgers is never an easy out on the mat, however this year’s version of the Scarlet Knights is a far cry from their loaded team from last season. Would they be able to play spoiler at home against Penn State Wrestling?
Nope.
The Nittany Lion Wrestling Team completely crushed Rutgers to the tune of 33-8 and only Maryland and Clarion stand in their way to yet another undefeated dual meet season.
Now onto the action!
The dual started out at 125 where Gary Steen was back in the lineup once again after Marco Vespa occupied the spot against Indiana.
And the struggle bus continues to chug along at this spot as Steen dropped a technical fall against Rutger’s Dean Peterson. This is now the fourth straight dual in which the Nittany Lions have given up either a technical fall or a fall in the opening match.
In the next match at 133, Roman Bravo-Young had the night off for the second straight dual and Baylor Shunk got to see more mat time.
Shunk battled tough but he couldn’t recover from giving up two takedowns in the opening period. After the first two matches of the evening, the Scarlet Knights jumped out to an 8-0 lead.
And just like in the dual against the Hoosiers last Sunday, Beau Bartlett got Penn State on the board. And he got them on the board with authority!
No, it wasn’t a 12 second pin, but Bartlett got to his offense early and often and breezed to the 12-1 major decision.
Then at 149, Shayne Van Ness kept the bonus points rolling with a dominant 21-9 major decision win.
Van Ness’ match was fairly close after the first and second period as he lead 6-4 and 10-6 respectively. But Shayne really opened up everything in the final period by pouring on 10 points to go along with the riding time point.
With six matches remaining in the dual the Nittany Lions pulled even with Rutgers 8-8
Levi Haines then kept his winning ways going by earning a workman like 8-2 decision over his ranked Scarlet Knight foe.
The win prior to the break gave Penn State wrestling its first lead of the night, 11-8, with a lot of wrestling action yet to come.
And action is exactly what the Jersey Mike’s Arena fans saw in the next match involving Alex Facundo.
Do you like takedowns? Well I hope so because Alex Facundo piled up 11 takedowns in his one-sided match at 165. The talented freshman was dominant from the opening whistle in winning a 25-12 major decision.
Then at 174, Carter Starocci kept the officials and the scoreboard operators busy with repeatedly taking his Rutgers counterpart to the Resilite and turning him at time as he walked through a 16-3 major decision of his own.
With only three matches left on the night, the Nittany Lions started to really pour it on by extending their lead to 19-8.
In the third ranked matchup of the dual, Aaron Brooks made easy work of his opponent by rolling, both figuratively and literally, to the 18-3 technical fall.
At no point in this match did it look like Brooks was taking on a top 15 grappler as he was able to land shot after shot. Then in the top position he racked up eight near fall points and nearly pinned his guy earlier in the match.
Following the demolishing, the Nittany Lions then lead the dual 24-8.
Max Dean and Greg Kerkvliet took care of business in the remaining two matches of the evening as they won by a major decision (11-2) and a technical fall (16-0) respectively.
Next up on the schedule for Penn State Wrestling is a home dual against No. 28 Maryland this Sunday at 1pm.
No. 1 Penn State 33 No. 23 Rutgers 8
125 No. 16 Dean Peterson (RU) tech. fall over Gary Steen (PSU) 21-6, PSU 0 RU 5
133 No. 15 Joe Heilmann (RU) dec. over Baylor Shunk (PSU) 7-2, PSU 0 RU 8
141 No. 6 Beau Bartlett (PSU) major dec. over No. 19 Joey Olivieri (RU) 12-1, PSU 4 RU 8
149 No. 13 Shayne Van Ness (PSU) major dec. over Tony White (RU) 21-9, PSU 8 RU 8
157 No. 8 Levi Haines (PSU) dec. over No. 33 Andrew Clark (RU) 8-2, PSU 11 RU 8
165 No. 9 Alex Facundo (PSU) major dec. over Luke Gayer (RU) 25-12, PSU 15 RU 8
174 No. 1 Carter Starocci (PSU) major dec. over Jackson Turley (RU) 16-3, PSU 19 RU 8
184 No. 1 Aaron Brooks (PSU) tech. fall over No. 14 Brian Soldano (RU) 18-3, PSU 24 RU 8
197 No. 3 Max Dean (PSU) major dec. over Billy Janzer (RU) 11-2, PSU 28 RU 8
285 No. 2 Greg Kerkvliet (PSU) tech. fall over Kyle Epperly (RU) , PSU 33 RU 8