Blue White Illustrated

G etting ready for a college wrestling postseason has never looked like this. From COVID-19 quarantines to contact tracing, postponements have been rampant and consistency – both in limited competition dates and many times limited practice time – is anything but a sure thing. But Penn State coach Cael Sanderson has kept doing this thing – staying calm and claiming that his Nit- tany Lion wrestling team will be ready for the Big Ten Confer- ence and NCAA cham- pionship tournaments despite having competed just four times in the first four weeks of a season origi- nally designed to be considerably shorter. Those numbers are not a recipe for con- sistency, and the coach, now in his 12th year at Penn State, admitted after victo- ries over Indiana and Northwestern on Jan. 30 that the team did not wrestle "off the charts." The Lions showed a bit more splash in a win over Wisconsin just three days later on Feb. 2. After its Feb. 12 match against No. 1 Iowa was postponed because of COVID in the Iowa camp, Penn State and Michigan arranged a Valentine's Day morning match, halting a 12-day layoff. Sanderson kept his promise that his team would get better as the season progressed – no mat- ter how short and shuffled it is. The team's 18-13 victory in Ann Arbor pretty much assured three things: Penn State (4-0) will move to No. 2 from No. 3 in the late-season rankings; Sanderson won the 200th match of his career; and, most im- portant to Sanderson, the team wrestled as if it was ready to be a postseason con- tender. "We just want the guys to get some great experiences and get some duals and get as much as we can out of this season," Sanderson said on the Penn State Radio Network prior to the match against Michigan. "These dual meets are some- thing you remember forever." That may well be the case for Carter Starocci, Penn State's redshirt freshman 174-pound starter. Starocci, the highly touted two-time state champion from Erie, Pa., who was upset in his first varsity bout against Indiana, knocked off sec- ond-ranked Logan Massa of Michigan, 7- 1 in overtime. Sanderson contends that Starocci will be a championship con- tender this season, and that win could be the steppingstone that both coach and wrestler were looking for. Although this happens in normal times, Penn State has yet to nail down a 10-man lineup. It has forfeited at 125 pounds be- cause of coronavirus concerns; it still has four wrestlers vying for one spot at 149; and it has a freshman 197-pounder with just two matches on his record. That lineup may have solidified somewhat on Feb. 14 when freshman Robbie Howard debuted – and won – at 125. And despite losing, 8-5, Michael Beard at 197 was highly competi- tive against Myles Amine, a 2021 Olympian for the country of San Marino. As of this writing, Penn State was slated to wrestle at Ohio State on Feb. 19. Unless postponed matches against Rutgers, Michigan State and Iowa are rescheduled, which is no certainty, the Nittany Lions have just one match remaining – Feb. 22 against Maryland in their only home match of the season. Penn State will host the Big Ten tournament, which is the team's portal to the NCAA champi- onships March 18-20 in St. Louis. Normally, hosting the Big Tens would be a huge advantage for Penn State, given WOMEN'S BASKETBALL Consistency sought as win streak ends Penn State has a very young team this season, and like a lot of young teams, the Lady Lions are streaky and inconsistent – not just from game to game but within games, too. Their 78-65 loss to visiting Michigan State on Feb. 13 offered a case in point. Penn State got off to a sluggish start and trailed the Spartans by 22 points at halftime, 48-26. The Lady Lions got into a rhythm in the second half, shooting 48.4 percent and outscoring Michigan State by nine, but by then it was too late. The defeat was Penn State's second in a row, coming on the heels of a 90-65 road loss to 15th-ranked Indiana, and it dropped the team to 8-9 overall and 5-8 in the Big Ten. "We have to figure out how to play four quarters," coach Carolyn Kieger said. "The last two games, we've been up and down, and that goes along with youth and leader- ship. I'm pleased with our fight in the second half, but obviously we can't start out that flat." Before their trip to Bloomington, the Lady Lions had won four in a row, including a 98-74 thrashing of Wisconsin on Feb. 7 in which they scored their most points in a Big Ten game since February 2001. It was the best stretch of Kieger's two-season tenure as head coach, but the Hoosiers brought the joyride to a sudden end, outscoring Penn State 51-25 in the second half. One consistent positive for PSU has been the play of forward Johna- sia Cash. Heading into a Feb. 18 visit to Iowa, she had put together seven double-doubles in the team's past 10 games. –MATT HERB W R E S T L I N G | STAROCCI PROGRESS REPORT With a hard-fought win over second-ranked Michigan, PSU appears to be rounding into postseason form

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