NCAA Wrestling Rankings: Hawk No. 1

BHGP proudly presents your No. 1 ranked Iowa Hawkeyes!!!

Sounds pretty damn good, yeah? It’s been several years since we’ve been atop the rankings, but we’re finally back up there. Now, the trick is stay up there through March and into next year and beyond.

With Iowa’s dominating beat down over Iowa State, 29-6, last weekend, we moved over Penn State into first place. I said last week I was using Trackwrestling for our rankings, which was a typo. I will be using Intermat for the remainder of the season.

INDIVIDUAL

*indicates overall ranking per class

All of our big hammers have stayed par for the course. However, #2 Austin Desanto takes on #1 Seth Gross from Wisconsin on Sunday. This will be the toughest test to date in Austin’s career. Gross is on an absolute tear right now and bulldozed his way through the Bill Farrell open a couple weeks back, upsetting three former NCAA champs: Nick Suriano, Darian Cruz, and Nathan Tomasello to win gold. If Austin drops Gross, well, there’s only one direction he can move in the rankings.

Everyone else has remained solid as a rock, except for Kaleb Young who lost to ISU’s freshman phenom, David Carr. Per Wrestlestat, KY drops one spot to #3, Carr moves all the way up to #2.

Also, Max Murin is has slowly fallen down the rankings one or two spots, mostly due to inactivity. If he’s able to come back this weekend against Wisconsin, he can instantly catapult up the rankings if he knocks out #6 Tristan Moran.

Marinelli and Kemerer have stayed the same even with dominating performances against ISU, however the big mover of the week goes to Nelson Brands. He’s upset ranked opponents in consecutive weekends and now finds himself at #13. Though, he’s as high as #6 on Flowrestling! I’m still thinking Cash will be the long term solution here, but Nelson is wrestling at an elite level right now and they have to see where this goes.

I suspect we won’t have an answer until after the midlands late next month.

Cassioppi is still sitting outside of the top ten in all rankings, but he’s facing off with #6 Trent Hillger. A win here will easily push him up. Possibly into the top eight and into All-American range. If that happens, which I have a feeling it will, look for our overall team points to take another big boost upwards.

TEAM

I’m going to mention it again, because it’s fun as hell, but The Iowa Hawkeyes are #1 in the country, baybay!!! As it should be.

Intermat applied a rather odd shuffling to the team rankings this week. They continue to calculate tournament projections, so the dual results don’t play the ultimate deciding factor on who goes where, but still.

Despite their loss, Iowa State is still in the top ten, at #10.

Wisconsin splits last week’s tie with Ohio State and separates themselves to move up to #3.

Even though Nebraska beat Northern Iowa, 23-19, they tumble five spots, one lower than UNI, who is 0-2 on the season. Again, it’s based off tournament projection points, but that’s some serious disrespect right there.

But the big mover and shaker of the week goes to NC State. They beat the living day lights out of Cornell, 25-9, and with the emergence of Trent Hidlay (184lbs) they’ve added some serious points to their upper weights.

Most of the top programs have this weekend off as they prep for the Cliff Keen Invitational the following weekend. But the Big 3 are in action.

#1 Iowa vs #3 Wisconsin

#2 PSU vs #14 Lehigh

#3 OSU vs #24 Cornell