NCAA session VI notes: Gross wins first national title for SDSU, Snyder breaks Haselrig's Hex

2018 NCAA athlete interviews

Attendance: Session VI - 19,776 (single session record); Total – 113,743 (all-session record)

Team Race Insanity
Penn State and Ohio State entered the final session of the 2018 NCAA Championships, holding a combined team score of 255 points. With Penn State sending five to the finals and Ohio State putting two in the finals, that combined team score quickly rose to 275 points, which is just shy of an NCAA record for combined top-two team scores.

The previous record was set in 1997, with Iowa and Northern Iowa combining for 283.5 points, thanks to 170 from the Hawkeyes and 113.5 from the Panthers.

Penn State scored 141.5 points for first place, while the Buckeyes collected 133.5 team points.

The Nittany Lions have now won seven of the last eight NCAA team titles.

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
Penn State, Ohio State and Iowa are the only schools in the field on a streak of NCAA champions.

With national title wins from Zain Retherford, Jason Nolf, Vincenzo Joseph and Bo Nickal on Saturday night, Penn State extends its streak to eight-consecutive years with an individual NCAA champion. An impressive stat: PSU has won eight of its last nine NCAA finals matches.

Ohio State is now at seven-straight years with an NCAA champion after Kyle Snyder picked up his third title at heavyweight.

Earning a national champion in Spencer Lee at 125 pounds, Iowa is now on a two-year streak.

Breaking Haselrig’s Hex
With his 3-1 win over No. 2 Adam Coon in the 285-pound finals, Kyle Snyder became the first three-time NCAA heavyweight champion since 1989 when Carlton Haselrig of Pitt-Johnstown won his third.

Prior to Snyder, two other two-time NCAA champions had been stopped in their quest to a third. Tony Nelson of Minnesota was on his way to a third in 2014 when NC State’s Nick Gwiazdowski toppled the heavyweight great with a 4-2 win. Gwiazdowski held down the weight until 2016, when Snyder bumped up to heavyweight and defeated the Wolfpack wrestler in an incredible 7-5 sudden victory bout.

Get Jacked for Seth Gross
Seth Gross, who became South Dakota State’s first Division I All-American in 2017, added to his legacy on Saturday, becoming the Jackrabbits’ first DI national champion. In the 133-pound finals, he defeated Michigan’s Stevan Micic, 13-8.

Gross transferred to SDSU after his first year at Iowa. Since then, head coach Chris Bono has used Gross to bring South Dakota State to national prominence.

Senior Salutes
Seniors Zain Retherford of Penn State, Isaiah Martinez of Illinois and Kyle Snyder of Ohio State will go down in history as some of the NCAA Division I’s greatest wrestlers.

2017 Hodge Trophy winner Retherford finished a dominating career on Saturday night, winning his third-straight NCAA title and picking up his 94th-consecutive win. Retherford ends his time as a Nittany Lion with a 126-3.

Snyder, a four-time finalist, won three titles in his career (2016-18) and was an NCAA runner-up in 2015. He closes out his college career as a Buckeye with an impressive 75-5 career record.

Martinez was also a four-time finalist, winning titles in 2015 and 2016 and was an NCAA runner-up in 2017 and 2018. He wrapped up the 2018 season with an 18-1 record.

Martinez and Snyder became just the 15th and 16th wrestlers ever to be a four-time finalists. It was also the first time that two wrestlers had been in four NCAA finals together. The last four-time finalist was Logan Stieber, who advanced to the championship bout from 2012-2015.

Who Won Two in the Q (all from PSU)
There are now 140 two-time NCAA champions after three wrestlers won their second NCAA titles on Saturday at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.

In his third NCAA finals appearance, Penn State junior Jason Nolf defeated Hayden Hidlay of North Carolina State with a 6-2 decision to win his second-straight national title at 157 pounds.

At 165 pounds, defending 2017 champion Vincenzo Joseph knocked off No. 1 seed and two-time NCAA champion Isaiah Martinez, 6-1, to earn a second title of his own. The two met up in the finals last season, where Joseph dashed Martinez’s hopes of becoming a four-time champion. However, Joseph has put himself in a position to join an elite group of four-time NCAA champions.

Bo Nickal of Ohio State won his second title with an exclamation point as he pinned No. 2 Myles Martin in the first period of 184-pound match. It was the second time the two had met in an NCAA final and the ninth time they’ve wrestled each other in college. Martin won the NCAA title over Nickal in 2016 at 174 pounds, but Nickal holds a 7-2 advantage in the series.

Nickal ends the year with a perfect 31-0 record.

It Wasn’t a Fluke
Arizona State’s Zahid Valencia knocked off reigning NCAA champion Mark Hall of Penn State in the 174-pound finals, 8-2. Valencia’s win gave the Sun Devils its first national champion since 2011, when Anthony Robles and Bubba Jenkins took home individual golds at 125 and 157, respectively.

Valencia ends an outstanding sophomore season with an unblemished 32-0 record.

It was the second time the two had met in the NCAA tournament. Last season, Hall took a 4-3 win over Valencia in the 174-pound semifinals. Valencia and Hall wrestled earlier in the year at the All-Star Classic, an exhibition match, and Valencia flipped the result, picking up a 3-2 win.

Freshmen Finish First
2018 marks the fifth-straight year that a freshman, redshirt or true, has been crowned an NCCA champion. This year, there were two true freshman to win individual titles, which is the first time since 1947.

Iowa’s Spencer Lee, who was brought out of redshirt halfway through the year, dominated in his first NCAA appearance, opening his tournament with two technical falls and picking up falls in the quarters and semis before defeating Rutgers’ Nick Suriano, 5-1, in the title bout at 125. Additionally, Lee scored the most individual team points in the entire field adding 27 points to the Hawkeyes’ 97 team points.

Yianni Diakomihalis of Cornell picked off senior and top-ranked Bryce Meredith of Wyoming in the 141-pound national championship, winning 7-4 to become the second freshman of the night to win the tournament. He is Cornell’s second true freshman national champion. The first came in 2010 when Kyle Dake started his journey to four-straight titles.

Cleveland Rocks
The last time the NCAAs were held in Cleveland was 20 years ago in 1998 at the CSU Convocation Center. Iowa took home the team gold medal with 115 points, while Minnesota was the runner-up with 102 points. Joe Williams (167) of Iowa was Outstanding Wrestler. It was Iowa’s fourth-consecutive team title. The Hawkeyes went on to win two more team titles before being dethroned.

Macchiavello Puts Out Haught Flame
Mike Macchiavello of NC State finally got a win over Jared Haught of Virginia Tech, when met up for the third time this season in the NCAA finals at 197 pounds. Going into the finals, Haught held a 2-0 advantage in the series, defeating the Wolfpack wrestler, 2-1, in the dual and then again in the ACC Championship final, 6-4, in overtime.

With less than 20 seconds left in the match, Macchiavello scored a clutch takedown for a 3-1 win. It was the first takedown scored in the series.

Saturday night at 197 marked the first time in NCAA history that two ACC wrestlers met up in the finals. Individually, Macchiavello is only the fourth North Carolina native to reach the championship finals, while Haught is the first West Virginia native to do so.