Wrestling: Penn State Is The Best Program In the Country, With 6 NCAA Titles in 7 Years

This is a story about two very different animals: the 800-pound gorilla and the elephant in the room. The gorilla in this case is the team from Happy Valley, coached by the greatest college wrestler in history, with six NCAA team titles in seven years to its credit.

The elephant in the room? Ohio State is coming for their crown, and it's title or bust for the Buckeyes.

Buckeye head coach Tom Ryan, predictably, was asked his expectation for the team during the team's annual media day in early October. He hesitated with his answer.

"We don't discuss it much as a team, but the deep..." he began, "...we want to win the national championship, bottom line. This is a team that is good enough to be the best team in the country."

“Right now, I feel like we've got the best team in America.”– Ohio State Head Coach Tom Ryan

Few coaches will say what's really on their minds when faced with such a question about a team that is regarded as one of two "super teams" in the NCAA this season.

Ryan may have hesitated, but he has good reason to say what was really on his mind: His 2016 team was national runner-up to one of the greatest teams of all time, and the Buckeyes only got better in the offseason.

"This team has the potential to score more points than [last year], and the reality is that anything short of a title would be a disappointment," he explained. "We all know that the potential is there."

Ohio State finished the tournament in St. Louis with 110 points, among the largest point totals in history, but still fell almost 40 points short of Penn State's near-record tally. But with incoming transfers Joey McKenna and Te'Shan Campbell joining the lineup, and Ke-Shawn Hayes returning from injury, the team's roster is as good as any in the country.

It's not a stretch to think that Ohio State could not only qualify all 10 wrestlers for the tournament, but that it could see the extremely rare feat of fielding 10 All-America finishes and multiple national championship winners.

Prior to Cael Sanderson's arrival in Happy Valley, Penn State has one NCAA wrestling championship to its credit. Since 2011, they've added six, winning the tournament in every year save 2015, when Ryan and the Buckeyes ran roughshod through the field.

Photo: Joe Maiorana-USA TODAY Sports

Sanderson is a living legend in his own right: he is one of only four men to win four NCAA wrestling titles as a competitor, with an almost unthinkable record of 159-0 during his Iowa State career.

Since taking the reigns of the Nittany Lions program he's become the Nick Saban of wrestling, with his program not only snatching up team titles as consistently as does the football team in Tuscaloosa, but also fielding individual champions who score bonus points seemingly at will.

Penn State will return five defending national champions to its lineup this season. Five. That's five times more than does Ohio State, though the Buckeyes do feature three starters who have won an NCAA title during their career.

Remember also that 36.5-point margin of victory at least year's tournament. Ohio State's roster definitely got better, but Penn State's didn't get much worse, either.

Ryan knows what his team is facing.

"Obviously Penn State has an amazing program," he said. "We know Penn State scores a lot of points. We've got a lot of big point scorers as well, but that was a factor last year; they've got some guys who pin people, and they have five champions back."

Ohio State's two-time defending heavyweight champion and No. 1 pound-for-pound wrestler on the planet Kyle Snyder didn't mince words about the rivalry between the two programs.

"The team race this year between us and Penn State will probably go down as two of the greatest NCAA teams in the history of this sport to ever compete against each other," he told Eleven Warriors. "I believe that our 10 guys are better than their 10 guys, but it doesn't matter what I believe because we have to go out there and prove it."

Digging into the latest preseason rankings and FloWrestling's NCAA predictions, Snyder isn't just blowing smoke about his teammates:

*Reigning NCAA Champion

That the roster is feast or famine for the Nittany Lions. Where Ohio State could see any of its starters conceivably on the podium in March, Penn State's lightweights are a major question mark in the season, with two freshman among the three starters unranked in the preseason standings. From 149 through 174, on the other hand, it starts the clear favorite to win the weight class in the postseason.

Ohio State, on the other hand, fields the prohibitive favorite in three weight classes, although Nathan Tomasello's recovery from a knee injury at the U23 World Team Trials certainly bears watching in early 2018. Snyder will win his third NCAA title and Moore has the inside track to earn his first at 197.

Looking at where Ohio State came up short last year, the addition of McKenna to the roster and the move of Tomasello from 133 back to 125 gives Tom Ryan the ability to slot wrestlers in the best position on the roster for the team's ultimate goal.

Pletcher, for example, was an undersized 141 last year due to the injury of Ke-Shawn Hayes, who will return to the lineup this year at 149 hungry to prove he's as good as previously expected.

The Jordan brothers are as good as they come, but haven't quite grabbed the brass ring at the tournament, and are as well positioned to do so this year as they've ever been.

Ryan said that heading into the 2015 season, in which his team won it all, he knew he was fielding a special team.

"I've coached a lot of teams, and I had the feeling that they were going to be the best team in America, and we won. And in 2017, right now, I feel like we've got the best team in America."

That may be the elephant in the room, but Ryan, Snyder and the Buckeye wrestling roster show no fear of their 800-pound-gorilla rival.