There’s no shortage of intrigue heading into this year’s college wrestling season, from new coaches to reloaded lineups to weight class changes. Here are the three biggest questions on our minds as the season nears:
What will it take for Carter Starocci to be the first five-time NCAA champion?
Last year, Penn State’s 174-pounder Carter Starocci and his 197-pound teammate Aaron Brooks made history when they became the sixth and seventh four-time NCAA champions, respectively. They joined their coach, Cael Sanderson, as well as Pat Smith, Kyle Dake, Logan Stieber, and Yianni Diakomihalis in that elite club.
PENN STATE LEGENDS: How Carter Starocci and Aaron Brooks won their fourth national titles
Brooks wrapped up his college career in 2024 and continued wrestling on the senior level, winning a bronze medal at the 2024 Olympics. Starocci, however, is back for one more year. He looks to become the first (and only) wrestler to ever win five national championships.
Starocci’s ability to chase five titles stems from his success in 2021, the “free” COVID year. During that season, Starocci’s redshirt freshman year, he finished the regular season 7-1, his lone loss coming against Indiana’s DJ Washington in his varsity debut. He then took second at the Big Ten tournament following a 7-2 loss to Michael Kemerer but reversed that result at the NCAA tournament when he tore through the bracket, notching wins over Victor Marcelli, Hayden Hastings, Andrew McNally, Demetrius Romero and Kemerer to claim his first national championship.
Since that year, Starocci has not been beaten in a full-length match. He won his next 64 matches straight, including national title wins over Mekhi Lewis in 2022 and Mikey Labriola in 2023. His performances put him on the list of Hodge Trophy finalists during both of those seasons.
In the 2023-2024 season, Starocci's winning streak continued. He teched or pinned nine of his first 12 regular season opponents that year before suffering a knee injury just before the Big Ten tournament. Starocci then took two injury default losses at the 2024 Big Ten tournament to Brody Baumann and Andrew Sparks following a knee injury, ending his winning streak. Both of those forfeits came in the first two seconds of the match.
PENN STATE WINS BIG TENS: Here's a full breakdown of every match
Starocci’s injury was the biggest story heading into the 2024 NCAA tournament, but he silenced any potential critics immediately. In a series of gritty matches, Starocci outlasted Lewis, a 2019 NCAA champion himself, in the 2024 NCAA quarterfinals and topped 2021 NCAA champion Shane Griffith in the semifinals before beating Ohio State freshman Rocco Welsh 2-0 to capture his fourth championship. His performance once again put him on the list of Hodge Trophy finalists, though his teammate Brooks would ultimately win the honor.
The biggest challenge for Starocci now — and the most interesting aspect of his quest for a fifth title — is the fact that he’s attempting to win another national championship up a weight class. Starocci has dominated the 174-pound weight class for the last four seasons, serving as a steady presence for the Nittany Lions in the lineup. Now he’s expected to be up at 184 pounds where he’ll have to beat 2024 NCAA champion and fellow Hodge Trophy finalist Parker Keckeisen to further cement his name into the record books.
Keckeisen went 28-0 with a 90.32% bonus rate last season, bonusing his way through the NCAA tournament. He’s aggressive, scrappy and tough — his style encompasses everything you would expect from a championship wrestler out of Northern Iowa. Despite all of this, he’s coming into the season ranked No. 2 behind Starocci in FloWrestling’s latest rankings.
Starocci’s credentials, and his four-year title streak down at 174, have given him the pre-season edge. He’s also proven himself against former national champions in the past.
But sign me up to watch Starocci vs. Keckeisen all day.
These two guys aren’t just elite competitors, but they bring opposite personalities to the mat too, with Starocci offering up an outspoken, provocative side of his brand online and Keckeisen positioning himself as a quieter, humble athlete. It’s quite literally a clash of champions with pride and history on the line.
What will Oklahoma State look like under the leadership of David Taylor?
For 15 years, David Taylor embodied the winning brand of Penn State wrestling. He won four team titles, two individual titles and two Hodge Trophies for the Nittany Lions before moving on to the senior level with the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club and continuing his winning ways. He captured his first world championship in 2018 before qualifying for the 2021 Olympics and beating Iran’s Hassan Yazdani for gold in Tokyo. He then earned his second and third world titles in 2022 and 2023 after taking silver to Yazdani in the 2021 World Championships.
DAVID TAYLOR: History, records, accomplishments
Taylor’s record is nearly impeccable — he’s one of the best wrestlers in American history and certainly one of the best, if not the best, wrestlers to ever come out of the Penn State program.
Now Taylor, once a long-time Nittany Lion with deep ties to State College and the Penn State program, is stepping out on his own, looking to make history with his new team: the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
The Oklahoma State Athletic Department announced Taylor as its new head coach on May 6 following the retirement of longtime head coach and fellow Olympic gold medalist John Smith. Since the announcement, the spotlight has remained steady on Taylor.
The expectations are that he returns Oklahoma State to its status as the best college wrestling program in the country. But to do that, he’ll have to take down his old coach Cael Sanderson and his alma mater, a program that has become so synonymous with dominance the last decade.
Taylor inherits a program in a unique place. Of the team’s ten NCAA qualifiers from last year, seven return including Troy Spratley, Tagen Jamison, Teague Travis, Brayden Thompson, Dustin Plott, Luke Surber and Konner Doucet. While Plott is the only one on that list with All-American honors to his name, the Cowboys also brought in a number of transfers, specifically All-American Dean Hamiti, All-American Wyatt Hendrickson and All-American Cam Amine to add firepower to the lineup. Multiple-time national qualifier Caleb Fish also transferred to Oklahoma State as a middleweight.
The biggest loss for the program is the graduation of four-time NCAA finalist Daton Fix who consistently scored nearly two dozen team points every time he competed in the national tournament. Fix, though, has elected to stay in Stillwater to train with the Cowboy Wrestling Club under the leadership of Taylor and his new staff that also includes Olympic bronze medalist Thomas Gilman.
In the last five years, the Cowboys have placed 3rd, 3rd, 14th, 18th, and tenth at the national tournament. The team was ranked as high as second at one point during the regular season last year, but finished outside of a team trophy for the third year in a row. Taylor’s lineup has trophy potential, but all eyes will be on him and the Cowboys to see if they can compete with the giant that is Penn State and potentially bring more hardware home to Stillwater.
How will transfers impact the team race?
Oklahoma State’s success in securing transfers Wyatt Hendrickson, Cam Amine, Dean Hamiti and Caleb Fish put the Cowboys high on the list of teams that won the transfer portal this off-season, but Taylor is far from the only coach making roster moves.
Michigan, a team that put two transfers in the national finals last year, added another star to the lineup this year in Cornell graduate Jacob Cardenas. A two-time All-American for the Big Red, Cardenas finished fourth last year and is currently ranked second by FloWrestling at 197 pounds. The Wolverines, as a team, finished third last season, but the team race will only intensify this year. Head coach Sean Bormet will need Cardenas and fellow returning All-American Dylan Ragusin to lead the team into scoring above their pre-season seeds to compete with a number of other trophy contending teams this season.
HOW GRAD TRANSFERS FIND SUCCESS: Learn more about Michigan's ability to help athletes jump levels in their fifth years
Another program on the bubble of potentially earning a team trophy this year that reloaded with transfers in the off-season is the Virginia Tech Hokies. The last time Virginia Tech won a team trophy was 2016, but head coach Tony Robie has had the team close every year since he’s been in charge. Virginia Tech took seventh last year as a team, and while the team did lose 2019 NCAA champion Mekhi Lewis, the program picked up two transfers in Lennox Wolak and Connor McGonagle from Columbia and Lehigh, respectively.
Wolak took sixth in the deep 174-pound weight class last year, beating Nick Incontrera, Benny Baker and All-American Cade DeVos to secure his podium spot. He'll now inherit the 174-pound spot once held down by Lewis.
McGonagle, meanwhile, had a different kind of season last year. After suffering an injury at EIWAs in 2023, McGonagle come into last year with high expectations. He wrestled in the All-Star Classic and was on track to chase All-American honors for the first time in his career. However, McGonagle ended up dropping a match to teammate Ryan Crookham at the Journeyman Classic and losing his starting spot. Crookham would go on to finish third at the NCAA tournament, while McGonagle spent the year in waiting. Now, as the expected starter for his new team, the Hokies, McGonagle has an opportunity to make his mark on the 133-pound weight class again. Virginia Tech has a stellar lightweight room too with All-American Eddie Ventresca at 125 pounds and All-American Sam Latona up at a new weight of 141 pounds. Returning NCAA champion Caleb Henson is the 149 pound rep too, rounding out one of the best potential quartets in the country.
Then there’s the Hawkeyes. Iowa’s men’s wrestling head coach Tom Brands also picked up three All-Americans in the off-season, including former Sun Devils Kyle Parco and Jacori Teemer at 149 and 157 pounds and former Sooner Stephen Buchanan at 197 pounds. All three of these new athletes can win national titles this year.
Teemer and Buchanan will both start the year ranked No. 1 after their second and third-place finishes last season respectively. Parco, meanwhile, is currently ranked fourth but showed his ability to compete for a national title last year when he secured two wins over 2022 NCAA finalist Ridge Lovett. The Hawkeye men finished fifth as a team in 2024, one spot behind in-state rival Iowa State and one spot short of a team trophy. Teemer, Buchanan and Parco could help put Iowa back in the mix once again, though Iowa will still need big points from returning NCAA finalist Drake Ayala at 133 pounds and returning All-Americans Nelson Brands and Michael Caliendo (a transfer from North Dakota State last season) to push for a spot in that top tier.
HAWKEYE HEROS: The complete history of the Iowa Hawkeyes wrestling program
The biggest Iowa pickup though came on the women’s side, as head coach Clarissa Chun secured a commitment from 2024 Olympic silver medalist Kennedy Blades. After finishing second at the Olympic Trials in 2021 and then graduating from high school at Wyoming Seminary, Blades moved to Arizona State and started training with the Sunkist Kids Regional Training Center (RTC). Her decision to opt for RTC training was notable at the time, as varsity women’s wrestling programs at the Division I level were starting to emerge but still only existed in select states.
Sunkist Kids, though, proved to be an ideal home for Blades for the last several years. She took third at the U20 World Championships and second at the U23 World Championships. Three months before the 2024 Olympic Trials, she traveled to Croatia to earn a bronze medal at the Zagreb Open. She then topped 2021 Olympic silver medalist Adeline Gray in a best-of-three final series at the Olympic Trials to secure her spot on a Team USA where she too would go on to earn the silver medal. She’s now the first Iowa women’s college varsity wrestler to earn an Olympic medal, and her experience will add depth to an already loaded team that took home the 2024 National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships.
