Blue White Illustrated

early a month has passed and I still haven't wrapped my mind around how this one ended. I've been to eight NCAA wrestling tournaments now, starting in 2011 when Cael Sanderson won the first of his seven crowns as head coach at Penn State. My total pales in comparison to that of my colleagues, some whom have been attending for decades. There are fans who have watched so many more, but I've seen enough now to realize that this tourna- ment is never, ever, a letdown. But in Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, where the Nittany Lions won their third in a row with their backs against the wall – or lit- erally the mat – this one outdid them all. Putting aside how it took Penn State until the very last of its 48 total matches, this was a marvel in its entirety. A No. 2 seed went down in the first round, a No. 1 lost in the quarterfinals and a small- school No. 15 seed stormed to the champi- onship final. Upsets were common, hearts were broken, dreams were made – and it all happened over a 72-hour span in mid- March. As a sporting event, the national wrestling tournament is overwhelmingly climatic, and even those who have been in the stands at the Olympic Games say the NCAAs are their only rival. It wouldn't surprise me. But after those three days, I've become numb to the unexpected. There were his- toric feats and close calls in PSU's previ- ous championship runs, but this most recent one was unforgettable. Heading into the final round on March 17, Ohio State led by six points with only 10 matches left in the 640-bout tourna- ment. ESPN2 was about to go live, bring- ing the tournament's last 10 bouts to a national audience. As the cameras panned the tournament-record crowd of 19,775, it was impossible not to notice that many of those fans were nice and jazzed up on St. Patrick's Day. With fans of the Buckeyes and Lions making up the majority of the crowd, flames from the pyrotechnic torches at the corners of the mat weren't the only heat you felt. While Ohio State held the score advan- N FALL CLASSIC Bo Nickal's pin at 184 pounds clinches yet another Nittany Lion national championship while o0ering a reminder of the tournament's endless capacity to dazzle and delight W R E S T L I N G • P O S T S E A S O N R O U N D U P C O M M E N T A R Y B Y T I M O W E N

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