After the Lions’ first dual of last season, on November 19, 2024, I wrote the following:
Despite Penn State’s record-breaking performances last year, it’s looking and feeling like this season will provide
even more fireworks. This 2025 lineup is so good and broad that extreme records such as 2001 Minnesota’s 10 All-Americans or the shared (2017 PSU, 2005 OkSt, 1997 Iowa) 5 National Champs could be under attack.
Back then, I neglected to mention the Dual Streak and the Nationals Points Records, both of which I’ll rectify here as we head into this 2026 season.
Lineup Refinement
Heading into the early part of last season, the 2025 lineup had mostly been correctly guessed:
- 125: Elite recruit true freshman Luke Lilledahl was expected to start.
- 141: 2x AA and 2024 Finalist Beau Bartlett returned.
- 149: 2023 3rd-place AA Shayne Van Ness was expected back from his 2024 season-ending injury.
- 165: Mitchell Mesenbrink returned from his 25-1 second-place 2024 finish.
- 174: Levi Haines had been announced as bumping up from his second- and first-place finishes at 157 in 2023 and 2024 respectively.
- 184: 4x National Champion Carter Starocci had announced he was bumping up from 174.
- 285: 4x AA and 2024 National Champion Greg Kerkvliet was returning for his final year of eligibility.
There were really only 3 weights I had down as any kind of question mark:
- 133: 2024 Big Ten Champion Braeden Davis was expected to bump up to here, to compete with 2023 5th-place AA and 2024 R12 finisher Aaron Nagao.
- 157: With Levi bumping up to 174 and Mesenbrink entrenched at 165, this weight looked like a battle between 2023 165-pound starter Facundo and 2024 149-pound 3rd place AA Tyler Kasak.
- 197: Because Lucas Cochran had gone 9-2, with a win over Rutgers AA Heavyweight Yaraslau Slavikouski, I had had him in contention with elite recruit Josh Barr, who had gone undefeated in his redshirt year behind Aaron Brooks, and elite true freshman recruit Connor Mirasola.
By the end of November’s Black Knight Invitational, the final questions had been answered.
It was announced that Nagao was recovering from an offseason injury, and Davis stayed home from West Point, to prepare for the Lehigh Dual on 12/8. Nagao never did recover and sat out the entirety of the 2025 season.
Barr majored both Mirasola and Cochran, and forced this mea culpa from me:
It’s so funny with these elite recruits who many of us haven’t seen wrestle much yet. I mean, yes, Barr is a 4x State Champ from Michigan who’s been working out in the Lorenzo Wrestling Complex for about 17 months now. He also went 14-0 last year while redshirting, racking up championships at four tourneys and majoring a buckeye in a spot start in the dual, to finish with a 73% bonus percentage.
Ok, nevermind, this is on me, in mistakenly thinking there might be a competition at this weight this year.
Neither Cochran nor new elite recruit Mirasola had anything at all for Barr, and it’s gonna be fun as hell watching him climb rankings until showing us what his final ceiling actually is.
Lucas Cochran and Connor Mirasola each went 3-1, Cochran placing 2nd and Mirasola 3rd.
Lastly, Tyler Kasak put his stamp on the 157 battle and forced Alex Facundo to the transfer portal, where he landed with David Taylor’s Oklahoma State Cowboys. He defeated Facundo 5-2:
Although Facundo did eventually escape both times he was on bottom, the ride that Kasak put on him was enough to earn the riding time point. Throw in that Kasak himself escaped after only 8 seconds, and that Kasak earned the only takedown, and it’s fair to say that Kasak won in all 3 positions.
Dual Meet Dominance
So with that settled, Penn State took the mat against Lehigh with a starting lineup that managed to toe the line for 8 of their 15 dual meets. Here were their ranks ahead of that meet:
Led by these wrestlers, Penn State completed a 15-0 dual meet season that may have been the most dominant dual season in history.
The Lions extended their Dual Meet Win Streak, from 56 to 71, posted 5 shutouts and held 5 others to only 3 team points. In only 2 of the 15 duals did an opponent win more than 2 individual bouts: #6 Ohio State and #13 Illinois, with both Kasak & Kerk out of the lineup. I tried listing some of these others in a narrative paragraph, but it doesn’t look as good as this list:
- In total, Penn State scored 599 team score points, to opponents’ 62, for an average dual meet score of 39.9 to 4.1.
- Of the 150 individual bouts in the 15 dual meets, Penn State won 133, to opponents’ 17, for an average of 8.9 bout wins to 1.1.
- Of those 133 bout wins, 90 of them were bonus wins, meaning Penn State won 68% of its wins via bonus, and a clean 60% of all of its bouts by bonus.
- In total, Penn State scored 1,598 bout points, to opponents’ 428, for an average bout score differential of 104.5 to 28.5, or an average of 76 more bout points than opponents.
Yes, the April, 2024 rule change of the 2-point takedown to the 3-point takedown contributed to those gaudy numbers, but the takedown numbers are mesmerizing by themselves. Only one opponent (Missouri, 16) limited the Lions to fewer than 20 TD’s; Penn State scored 25 or more against 6 of their opponents.
On defense, Penn State posted 4 occurrences to a brand new category we had to create for them: The Takedown Shutout.
It’s worth typing those teams’ names again, because 3 of them are in what Shane Sparks calls “the nation’s premier wrestling conference.” Michigan, Michigan State, Maryland and Binghamton failed to earn a single takedown against the Lions in 40 individual bouts. Welcome to the Takedown Shutout club, squads!
Only Iowa (8) and Ohio State (6) earned more than 5 takedowns against Penn State last year; everyone else scored 4 or fewer. The final math there is astounding:
- 369: PSU Total TD’s
- 34: Opponent Total TD’s
- 24.6: PSU Average TD’s per Dual
- 2.3: Opponent Average TD’s per Dual
- 335: Penn State’s Total Season Takedown Differential
- 22.3: Penn State’s average Takedown Differential
Weight by Weight
125
“Lightning Luke” stepped in and immediately showed all the skills that helped him become a multi-x age-group world medalist.
He dropped a tough 4-1 decision in the Rutgers Dual to Dean Peterson and got himself stuck underneath Ohio State’s top-riding specialist Brendan McCrone, who decked him, but he bounced back in the postseason to win the Big Ten Tourney. He entered the Nationals as the 1-seed.
After a tight loss to Lehigh’s Seymour in the Quarters, Lilledahl finished strong, in 3rd place and he contributed 18.5 team points to Penn State’s new team points record.
133
Braeden Davis bumped up from his 22-4, R12 true freshman season at 125, and went 17-7 at 133. He got a little banged up in January and missed the Iowa, Michigan and Maryland duals. He entered the Big Ten Tourney as the 4-seed, went 4-2 there and finished 4th.
That earned him the 8-seed heading into the Nationals:
Going 5-2 and finishing as a 5th-place All-American was a fine upgrade from his debut tourney in 2024.
141
Beau Bartlett returned from his 24-2, second-place 2024 finish for his 5th and final NCAA tourney. He was undefeated heading into Big Tens, finished second there to Minnesota’s Vance Vombaur, and entered the Nationals as the 2-seed.
In career matchups between the two, Bartlett and Ohio State’s Mendez are tied, 3-3. In 2024, Bartlett won in the dual, but lost at Big Tens and in the National Finals. Heading into Nationals in 2025, Bartlett had beaten Mendez in both the dual and at Big Tens. Alas, Mendez again got the last word and is a 2x National Champion.
Bartlett finished his illustrious Nittany Lion career as a 3x AA, with 3rd, 2nd & 3rd place finishes.
149
Shayne Van Ness had a fine return to the lineup after missing all of 2024. He started out 10-0, before getting majored by Nebraska’s Ridge Lovett in the dual. He finished the season with no other losses, entered the B1G Tourney as the 1-seed. There, he got upset by Illinois’ Kannon Webster in the semifinals and headed to the Nationals as the 3-seed.
He again struggled with Lovett, but went 5-0 otherwise, with 4 Bonus wins. He finished as a 2x AA who contributed 19.5 points to PSU’s record.
157
Tyler Kasak had a dominant true sophomore season, with his only blemish prior to the postseason a head-cautious injury default to Maryland’s Ethen Miller. He won Big Tens and headed into the Nationals as the 1-seed.
In the quarterfinals, he dropped a controversial 5-4 decision to Purdue’s Joey Blaze. But, similar to his 2024 tourney in which he dropped the first bout then won 7 in a row to finish 3rd, he again finished with multiple wins and in 3rd place, a 2x All-American.
165
Mitchell Mesenbrink ran the table from season start to season finish and is now a 2x All-American and 1x National Champion.
174
This weight was perhaps more difficult than the 2024, 157-pound weight class that Haines won. In the Missouri Dual, he gave up the winning takedown in overtime against 2x National Champion Keegan O’Toole. He entered the Big Ten Tourney as the 1-seed and bonused in 2 of 3 wins en route to the title, his 3rd. He drew the 3-seed heading into the Nationals.
Hamiti used his length to earn the deciding takedown over Haines in the semis and went on to win the National Championship in his final attempt. Levi returns in 2026 as a 3x AA and National Champion.
184
Excluding two injury default losses at the 2024 Big Ten Tourney, Carter Starocci had not lost a bout since the Big Ten final against Michael Kemerer in his redshirt freshman season—way back in 2021!
2025 was more of the same as he headed into the Nationals as the 1-seed.
He was deeply challenged by UNI’s great Parker Keckeisen, but Starocci again did what he’d always done and won. He finished his amazing career as a 5x National Champion, the first in history.
197
Josh Barr had a great season, in a tough Big Ten weight class. In the dual season, he split bouts with the top two opponents: a win over Michigan’s Jacob Cardenas and an L to Iowa’s Stephen Buchanan. He entered B1Gs as the 2-seed and gave up the winning TD in overtime against Cardenas in the semis. In the consis, he got injured against Minny’s Salazar and defaulted out to 6th place. This earned him the 4-seed heading into the Nationals.
There he had a great run, and fans were glad to see he was not much hampered by the injury at Big Tens. He avenged the loss to Cardenas, but was unable to solve Buchanan’s incredible defense.
285
Greg Kerkvliet began his 2024 title defense in pristine fashion, running to an 18-0 mark before falling to Minnesota’s 2x National Champ Gable Steveson in the Big Ten Finals. When he showed up at the Nationals with a big brace on his left knee, fans were worried.
His athletic and technical superiority allowed him to fight through the knee injury against the lower-seeded wrestlers, but not against 2-seed Hendrickson, who he had defeated 4-2 in the 2023 national tourney. Alas, his commitment to the team contributed 10.5 points and allowed it to break its own team scoring record.
Kerkvliet finished his amazing career as a 5x All-American and National Champion.
The Team Scoring Record
Heading into the 2025 season, Penn State was fresh off a record-setting performance in the 2024 National tournament, where they bested 1997 Iowa’s longstanding team scoring record of 170 points. In that tourney, they leveraged another longstanding tradition: Penn State Semifinals dominance in the Cael Sanderson era, to place 6 wrestlers into Saturday night’s Finals. There, they won 4 of 6 individual titles and finished with 172.5 points. This was also enough to mitigate the slight differences in the scoring rules between the two results.
But that 2024 team also, like 1997 Iowa did, had two wrestlers who ended their tourneys in the Round of 12, short of All-America honors and devoid of any valuable Placement Points.
2025 Penn State fixed that scoring issue and in such a way that its more-broadly balanced scoring distribution still increased the team total from 2024, despite only placing 3 into the finals and finishing with only 2 National Champions instead of 4.
Here’s a tighter look at the total points differences, for each weight, for each of Penn State’s two record-setting teams:
