Penn State wrestling won a title but might have lost a star.
How already angry coach Cael Sanderson reacts could put New Jersey’s Nick Suriano in the middle of the hot-button issue of reform for college wrestling’s postseason.
The teary-eyed Bergen Catholic product suffered a left ankle injury and had to take a default loss Sunday afternoon in the 125-pound match even as No. 1 Penn State topped No. 2 Oklahoma State, 27-13, in the title match of the NWCA National Dual Championship Series.
Suriano, who went 159-0 in high school, and South Plainfield-turned-Rutgers star Anthony Ashnault are the only undefeated four-time NJSIAA wrestling state champions in New Jersey history.
Rutgers vs. Lehigh; Bout-by-bout recap
In his first year at Penn State, Suriano has picked up where he left off, going 16-1 and earning the No. 2 national ranking in his weight class before Sunday’s default. His first loss was to No. 1 Thomas Gilman of Iowa in a bout decided by one point.
The severity of Suriano’s injury was not immediately known and there are two weeks of preparation time before the Big Ten Championships begin March 4 in Bloomington, Ind. Another 11 days stand between the conference and NCAA Championships in St. Louis.
Penn State freshman Nick Suriano was 16-1 at 125 pounds before suffering an injury that forced him to default Sunday. Mark Selders | gopsusports.com photo)
But even the slightest injury to any wrestler — let alone one of Suriano’s caliber — could reignite a hot-button issue like the NWCA National Duals, which included Lehigh’s win Friday against Rutgers.
The second-year event in the spirit of college football bowls is supposed to pit the top eight Big Ten teams against the top eight non-Big Ten teams in the nation.
It was designed as a compromise in a decade-long debate between coaches who want changes at the NCAA level and those who don’t like Sanderson.
“The NWCA has to hold people accountable,” Sanderson told PennLive.com. “They can’t say, ‘Well this doesn’t work, now we have to go to a National Duals format and we have to give it to the NCAA.’ That’s the frustration and the concern that we’ve been combating for 10 years now.”
The one apparent point of agreement between both sides: A postseason duals format has to be all or nothing rather than a series of exceptions made on individual cases.
“I love this stuff, and I hope they keep doing it,” Rutgers coach Scott Goodale, who takes winning in-season duals more seriously than many coaches, told NJ Advance Media after his team’s loss.
“I don’t know where they are going to go, but you’ve got to get all the coaches on board with this thing and enjoy this type of atmosphere. We’re two weeks out. Everybody is going to heal up. Until everybody is on board wrestling, we’ll never grow. We have to wrestle matches like this.”
Nick Suriano has to default because of left ankle injury. Jeff Byers says he’s in tears. A nine-point swing for sure. OSU leads 6-0.
— James R. Carlson (@JamesRCarlson) February 19, 2017
The NCAA crowns a team champion — Penn State in five of the last six years — based on results at the individual championships, not based on duals. The NWCA lacks the same authority as the NCAA and some teams on both sides declined to participate in the duals.
Furthering the tensions, only three of the eight NWCA duals were correctly paired according to the rankings, as Sanderson pointed out on Twitter. One of those was Penn State-Oklahoma State and another was Rutgers-Lehigh.
“In a dual meet it’s going to be the same teams and it’s going to be Big Ten teams wrestling each other over and over again,” Sanderson told PennLive.com, “which doesn’t make sense if you’re in the Big Ten because you go back and forth, and those losses are used against you in seeding for the nationals but the wins aren’t.
“Even if the NCAA is going to get to the point and they take over and force us into a dual championship, we shouldn’t be saying, ‘Hey, our product stinks, please come save us.’ I mean, we have a great product.”
The NWCA acknowledged in a press release that a committee faced challenges to accommodate teams’ needs as well as to pair teams up as competitively as possible. Yet No. 3 Iowa visited and routed No. 23 Edinboro.
Wisconsin and Minnesota — both of whom finished in the Big Ten’s top eight — and most teams around the country wrestled in a dual this weekend, so it’s possible that Suriano’s injury could have occurred regardless of the tournament or venue.
Perhaps the best dichotomy around Penn State-Oklahoma State was the lively crowd in Stillwater and the hungry social media audience awaiting results versus the lack of a television broadcast to serve and capitalize on the interest. It was available via online stream from FloWrestling.
Ryan Dunleavy may be reached at rdunleavy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rydunleavy. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook
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