Tag: Max Dean

Best photos from Penn State wrestling’s Big Ten championship

Best photos of Roman Bravo-Young and the Penn State wrestling program’s Big Ten championship.

Death, taxes, and Penn State wrestling. Once again the most dominant athletics program at Penn State celebrated a Big Ten championship at this year’s Big Ten wrestling championships, thus setting the tone for another potential national championship run for the program.

[autotag]Roman Bravo-Young[/autotag] (133), [autotag]Aaron Brooks[/autotag] (184),  [autotag]Carter Starocci[/autotag] (174), and [autotag]Levi Haines[/autotag] (157) all won individual Big Ten titles in their respective weight classes to help Penn State build its lead for the team championship. [autotag]Max Dean[/autotag] (197) and [autotag]Greg Kerkvliet[/autotag] (285) were finalists in their weight class as well but fell shy of a Big Ten championship.

Here are some of the best photos from Penn State’s wrestling stars at the Big Ten championships.

Jacob Warner ends stellar run for Iowa Hawkeyes as national runner up

Jacob Warner’s sensational run at the NCAA wrestling championships ended with a national runner up finish. As a team, Iowa placed third.

Jacob Warner’s bid for a national championship came up just short. The Iowa senior led 1-0 after a second period escape, but Penn State’s Max Dean responded with a third period escape and a third period takedown to capture the title in the 197-pound weight class, 3-2.

It caps a sensational run at the NCAA wrestling championships for Warner. The four-time All-American topped No. 27 seed Alan Clothier from Northern Colorado, 11th-seeded Thomas Penola from Purdue, No. 3 seed Eric Schultz from Nebraska and second-seeded Stephen Buchanan from Wyoming. The national runner up finish is the best of Warner’s decorated career.

The 6-foot-1 wrestler from Tolono, Ill., finishes his Iowa career with a record of 75-20. Warner placed seventh at the NCAA championships in 2019 and fourth last year as the No. 5 seed. With Warner’s appearance in the national finals, Iowa’s streak of 32 consecutive NCAA tournaments with at least one wrestler in the national finals is still intact.

The Washington Community High School product arrived at Iowa as a three-time Illinois state champion in the 170, 182 and 195-pound weight classes. Warner didn’t allow any points to be scored against him his senior year. He ends his Iowa career on a memorable note.

Meanwhile, fellow Iowa wrestlers Austin DeSanto, Alex Marinelli, Michael Kemerer and Tony Cassioppi all finished up their 2022 NCAA Tournaments on Saturday inside Little Caesars Arena from Detroit, Mich. The group’s finishes helped move Iowa into third place in the team race. DeSanto placed third at 133, Kemerer placed fourth at 174, Marinelli placed fifth at 165 and Cassioppi placed seventh at 285.

Contact/Follow us @HawkeyesWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Iowa news, notes, and opinions.

Follow Josh on Twitter: @JoshOnREF

Iowa Hawkeyes’ Jacob Warner advances to NCAA wrestling finals

Here’s how to watch Jacob Warner in the 197-pound NCAA wrestling national championship on Saturday night and details about his opponent.

Iowa’s Jacob Warner topped Wyoming’s Stephen Buchanan in the 197-pound semifinals, 6-4, on Friday night inside Little Caesars Arena to advance into the finals of the 2022 NCAA championships. As the No. 6 seed, Warner managed to oust the No. 2 seed in Buchanan thanks to four points in the third period.

“You know, I wrestled him last year and turned him here, so I knew I could do something on top. My last two matches were won by being able to ride, so I knew it was going to be a big factor into this match. All week, all last week I was working on getting that wrist tight. Right before this were working on it at the hotel and we were focusing on it, and I got that wrist and I knew as soon as I got it seatbelted to his hip, I knew I could do something with it, I knew I could get it. And didn’t get it right away, had to stick with it, had to keep elevating, keep going into him and made the difference,” Warner said.

While he pulled off an upset according to seeding here, Warner wasn’t ready to chalk this run to the national finals up as any sort of miracle.

“I don’t know if I would call it a Cinderella run. I knew I was going to be here, I knew I could win this tournament and obviously I’m in the national finals for a reason. I’ve got to wrestle hard, score the whole time, don’t give up easy points, finish in matches. I know if I do that I can win this tournament,” Warner said.

In the process, the four-time All-American kept one of college wrestling’s most amazing streaks alive: Iowa has now had an NCAA finalist every year since 1990. Here’s a look at how to watch Warner in the NCAA finals against Penn State’s Max Dean.

NCAA’s conundrum with wrestling and the Olympics

The NCAA has to figure out how to deal with the 2021 Olympics, assuming they happen. It’s not so simple for wrestling.

The coronavirus pandemic has obviously affected things far more important than sports all across the world. The impact on sports cannot be understated, though. The biggest domino in all of global sports fell on Tuesday, when the IOC announced that the Tokyo Olympics would be postponed until 2021.

This postponement will obviously have ripples throughout the sports world. Individual sports will have to figure out how to work around the Olympics. Will World Championships be held as scheduled, or postponed as they usually are in Olympic years? Will qualifying for Olympic sports reset? Will it be extended? Will deadlines for sports with rankings be based on this year’s rankings or next? All of these questions will have to be answered, of course.

For the NCAA, it will have a very unique set of problems for Wrestling.

Olympic Redshirt

NCAA Wrestling has a unique relationship with the Olympics. The NCAA allows any qualified wrestler (being qualified is essentially based on whether a wrestler has a serious chance of qualifying for the Olympics) to take off an Olympic season without using up a year of eligibility. The redshirted wrestler can train with his team but cannot compete in dual matches. The point of this is that the wrestlers is taking the year to train for the Olympics–so even though they are not injured, they get a redshirt.

Several of the top wrestlers in the NCAA–like Daton Fix, Yianni Diakomihalis, and Max Dean, among others–opted to take a redshirt in 2020. Diakomihalis, in particular, should have been expecting to medal in Tokyo. What happens to all of these athletes in 2021?

The basic principle behind the Olympic redshirt should still stand. Any wrestler who can qualify for Tokyo 2021–whenever and however that is–should be able to take the year to train without losing a year of eligibility. It seems like an easy decision, but it could be complicated further. Now students who were freshman in 2016 or 2020 could effectively be in college for seven years to wrestle (redshirts in three of 2016, 2020, 2021, and 2024). That’s a long time, even if we’re expecting them all to be attending graduate school.

Furthermore, the NCAA has a general problem of what to do about athletes in winter sports, which wrestling falls under. I’ve already made the claim that everyone should be granted another year of eligibility since they didn’t get to compete for a championship. But what happens to wrestling in particular?

Giving a second Olympic redshirt year will create a huge advantage for schools with athletes who have qualified players. Not only do they already have world-class wrestlers, but those wrestlers can still be competing in 2020. In fact, the existence of the redshirt already gives those schools a huge advantage if all wrestlers don’t get another year. These world-class wrestlers preserved a year of eligibility while the other top wrestlers lost one–and it didn’t cost the redshirts a chance at a championship.

The Olympic redshirt has the chance to create a huge inequality in 2021 and 2022, whether the NCAA grants a second year of it or not. Its very existence means that–unless the NCAA gives every wrestler who competed in 2020 another year of eligibility–those wrestlers who took one will be able to dominate college wrestling the next few years while most of their top rivals graduated.