Penn State holds off Wisconsin in back-and-forth Big Ten battle

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — First-year Wisconsin coach Chris Bono couldn’t fault his No. 10 Badgers’ effort Sunday in a 24-13 loss to No. 1 Penn State.

Even with three backups in the lineup and facing the daunting task of another sold-out Rec Hall crowd (6,589), the Badgers didn’t back down. However, a second consecutive loss, after a 17-16 setback at Rutgers on Friday, didn’t please Bono.

“I was happy with our effort there and I'm really happy with our effort here, but again we're going home to Madison 0 and 2, so it's disappointing,” he said.

Penn State won six of 10 bouts and amassed a 39-8 edge in takedowns, but Nittany Lion coach Cael Sanderson placed the blame on himself for an effort that at times looked less than his team’s best.

“I don't think we wrestled great, I don't think that's a secret. We didn't wrestle with a lot of fire. Usually that comes from feeling great and that's my job to make sure these guys feel good on match day,” he said.

“Also, I think Wisconsin did a great job. (Wisconsin head coach Chris) Bono had them ready to go and they seized the moment there in a couple of those matches, taking them at the end. We can learn and move forward.”

Not even the Nittany Lions’ 51st consecutive dual meet win was enough to please Sanderson.

“I don’t care about 51 in a row. We just want to do the best that we can and be the best that we can,” he said.

Unlike many teams, Wisconsin didn’t wilt under the bright lights of a road dual meet in the Lions’ den.

“It's the way we train our guys. It's the mentality that we can win anywhere. I believe we train harder than anybody in the country and we're not going to let any outside influence affect the way we train or the way we compete,” Bono said.

“Crowd this, crowd that, we're gonna fight tooth and nail and our motto is we're gonna live with the result. We have guys who need to get better, we have guys who need to fight a little bit harder but we have two months until the championship season starts, so I'm excited about it.”

It was clear from the start that the Badgers were intent on not backing down from the Nittany Lions. Wisconsin won the first bout and two of the next four to open a 10-9 lead at the intermission.

The teams swapped major decisions to start the bout. At 125, No. 15 Badger Connor Brown doubled up Devin Schnupp, 18-9, in a bout that featured an inordinate amount of reversals, seven.

At 133, No. 14 Nittany Lion Roman Bravo-Young picked up five takedowns in a 12-4 major over Jens Lantz.

Wisconsin, though, bounced back with a pair of upsets at the next two weights.

Fourth-ranked Nick Lee ceded the initial takedown to unranked Tristan Moran and from there the match was a back-and-forth dogfight. It went into a second sudden-victory period, where Moran countered a Lee shot for a takedown and a 12-10 win.

“He just kept shooting and he kept getting hit, Tristan was scooting around the corner on him and he was just kind of freezing in there. I think just a couple of adjustments and he should be finishing those shots a little bit better,” Sanderson said.

“That comes back to, in my mind, is him not being ready to go and that’s on me. Nick’s always going to give his best effort and he’s a great kid, work his tail off and wrestle as hard as he can. That was my coaching error. I don’t want to take anything away from our opponents, they came in and won the match.”

Bono said Moran is capable of producing more performances like his upset of Lee.

“Yeah, 41, our guy can wrestle, man. He hasn't shown his best wrestling and we know he can wrestle, we know he can win. We have to get him in a little better shape, gotta get his nutrition a little bit better, but the kid loves wrestling… he's a wrestling junkie. We're gonna get the most out of him,” he said.

Then, at 149, No. 9 Nittany Lion Brady Berge scored three first-period takedowns to open a 6-3 lead after a period, but could manage only an escape the rest of the way in an 8-7 loss to Cole Martin.

“I think Berge’s wrestling really well. Again, the same thing as Nick, he just didn’t have it. He came out, it was 6-3, he had three takedowns and just kind looked like he ran out of gas and he’s not a kid that runs out of gas unless his coach doesn’t have him ready to go,” Sanderson said. “I’m not worried about Brady. He’s as tough as they come. It stinks that he lost but credit to his opponent; he’s a tough kid. He’s tough.”

Top-ranked Jason Nolf drew the Nittany Lions to within a point at the break. He rolled up 11 takedowns to roll to a 25-10 technical fall over Badger backup 157-pounder Devin Bahr.

Coming out of the break, Wisconsin won its final match to extend its lead to 13-9. Third-ranked Badger Evan Wick built a 4-1 lead on backup Mason Manville, who was subbing in for Vincenzo Joseph, and coasted to a 6-1 decision. Joseph reportedly wasn’t feeling well, as was the report Friday night against Northwestern, as the top-ranked two-time 165-pound NCAA champion missed his second dual in a row.

“Cenzo wants to wrestle. When he feels well, he’ll wrestle. We don’t like not having our guys in the lineup, but we’re not going to put them in a position where they’re, I don’t want to say in danger, where they can’t be at their best. That’s not always true, either, because a lot of our guys weren’t at their best but they still wrestled today. It is what it is. We’ll fight another day.”

Penn State pulled out the win by sweeping the final four bouts, earning bonus points in two of them.

Mark Hall hit a throw for a six-point move to close out a 24-5 technical win at 174. Third-ranked Shakur Rasheed dominated in a closer-than-the-score-indicates 5-0 win at 184. At 197, top-ranked Bo Nickal closed with a flourish, scoring nine points in the final period in a 14-4 major decision.

“I think they had a good strategy coming out. They were hand-fighting hard and trying to slow us down and trying to tie us up. …definitely I think their strategy to slow us down was a good one,” Nickal said.

“At the end of the day, every single guy on our team is gonna go out there and wrestle hard and have a positive attitude and that's all the coaches ask for and that's what we're going to do.”

Third-ranked Anthony Cassar closed out the meet with a dominating 11-5 win over No. 9 Trent Hillger in the only matchup of ranked wrestlers.

In the final analysis, Sanderson blamed the closer-than-expected outcome, and the effort of some of his guys, on him and a well-coached Wisconsin team.

“Wisconsin is in good shape. They wrestle hard. If you listen to their coach, he was telling them to keep moving forward and keep the pace kind of a thing. We're a team that we pride ourselves on our conditioning and being ready to go and winning close matches and kind of dominating the enthusiasm factor. We didn't do that tonight,” he said.

“Like I said, that falls on me as the coach. If our guys feel good, they're gonna wrestle good, so I have to make sure they feel good.”

While Bono said he thought his guys were capable of winning even more than four matches, he seemed encouraged by the effort and the direction his has the program headed.

“I thought we could win a lot of matches. I think we could get a couple more. They have guys that have been there, you know what I mean? I don't have guys who have been there yet. They have guys who are national champs and they’ve got guys who have been there and they have a little bit of that aura around their program,” he said.

“We're building that and once we get that and start holding everybody accountable and our kids are holding everybody accountable, we're gonna be a program that's hopefully where Penn State is.”

No. 1 Penn State 24, No. 10 Wisconsin 13
(Sunday at University Park)

125: No. 15 Connor Brown, WIS, maj. Dec. Devin Schnupp, 18-9.
133: No. 14 Roman Bravo-Young, PSU, maj. Dec. Jens Lantz, 12-4.
141: Tristan Moran, WIS, dec. No. 4 Nick Lee, 12-10 SV2.
149: Cole Martin, WIS, dec. No. 9 Brady Berge, 8-7.
157: No. 1 Jason Nolf, PSU, won by tech. fall over Devin Bahr, 25-10, 6:37.
165: No. 3 Evan Wick, WIS, dec. Mason Manville, 6-1.
174: No. 1 Mark Hall, PSU, won by tech. fall over Patrick Spray, 24-5 (6:13).
184: No. 3 Shakur Rasheed, PSU, dec. Mason Reinhardt, 5-0.
197: No. 1 Bo Nickal, PSU, maj. Dec. Beau Breske, 14-4.
285: No. 4 Anthony Cassar, PSU, dec. No. 9 Trent Hillger, 11-5.

Attendance: 6,589.

Ridge Riley Award winner: Anthony Cassar, 285 pounds
Takedowns: Wisconsin 8, Penn State 39.
Records: Wisconsin 6-3, 1-3 Big Ten; Penn State 6-0, 2-0.
Next match: Nebraska at Penn State, 1 p.m. Sunday; Northwestern at Wiscocnsin, 7 p.m. Friday.