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NCAA D1 Weekly Roundup: 2024-25

NCAA D1 Wrestling Week 11 Roundup: Duals Are The Way

NCAA D1 Wrestling Week 11 Roundup: Duals Are The Way

The world's finest collection of noteworthy happenings from the 11th week of the 2024-25 NCAA D1 wrestling season.

Jan 13, 2025 by Andrew Spey
NCAA D1 Wrestling Week 11 Roundup: Duals Are The Way

Dual season is in full swing as the 2024-25 NCAA D1 wrestling season trudges along! And we're here to document all the noteworthy happenings from the 11th week of the season! 

Box Scores | Rankings | Last Week's Roundup

The biggest wrestling event this weekend was the NWCA Multi-Divisional National Duals. This wrestling extravaganza, hosted by Northern Iowa in the UNI Dome in Cedar Falls, features the unofficial dual meet championship tournaments at multiple divisional levels. 

It is the pinnacle of the dual meet season for the NAIA and NCAA D2 and D3 men's levels. Ditto for the NAIA and NCAA women's tournaments. The event used to feature a robust NCAA D1 men's tournament, however, the number of top teams interested in participating began to dwindle, and then not long ago that portion of the program was dropped entirely.  

But guess what? It looks like Division 1 is back on the menu! 

14 programs from 'non-power' conferences participated (not including affiliates, so no programs whose football and basketball teams are in the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, ACC or Pac-12). Some would classify the participating programs as 'mid-majors', but I wouldn't. Especially not within earshot of UNI head coach Dough Schwab. 

As for the results, the Panthertrain rolled to a championship in their home dome. 

The top eight placers in the 2025 NCAA D1 men's division were as follows: 

  1. Northern Iowa
  2. South Dakota State
  3. Little Rock
  4. Northern Colorado
  5. Pennsylvania
  6. Wyoming
  7. Central Michigan
  8. Drexel

Will more D1 teams participate next year? Specifically, will more 'Power 5 programs' participate? Will a dual meet tournament be utilized to crown, not just the NWCA champion, but the official NCAA champion as well? 

Not to get into a whole thing, but my answer to all those questions is "hopefully"!

But no worries if you hate the idea of an NCAA dual meet championship, as I don't get a say in the matter. What is true is that I thought it was a good idea to add a dual meet component to the NCAA championship process back when it was proposed over 10 years ago, and, after close to eight years in the wrestling media business, my convictions have only grown stronger.

But again, it's not me who you should be asking about this. In my opinion, the doyens of college wrestling should be asking ESPN what they think they should do about their postseason structure. The Worldwide Leader may technically be my employer's competition, but the folks in Bristol also control the media rights to the NCAA Wrestling Championships until 2032. 

And people want more wrestling on TV, right? Well, if Disney says they'll put more wrestling duals on their extremely powerful family of broadcast networks if wrestling adds a dual meet tournament to the championship process, well, that's probably what college wrestling should do! 

But that's for ESPN and the college wrestling honchos to hash out. I am but a humble blogger, here to report the news on whatever is decided. 

Anyway, I said I didn't want to make a whole thing about it so I'll get back to recapping this week's noteworthy events. 

Northern Iowa Wins the NWCA National Championship!

I know we already covered that but now I've said it in headline form and I can also start dropping in notes about UNI and the rest of the tournament. 

  • The Mighty Panthers of UNI only lost five matches over four duals on their rampage to a team title. 
    • Julian Farber notched two ranked wins over Northern Colorado and South Dakota State at 133.
    • Team talisman Parker Keckeisen also scored two top 20 wins in bouts against the 2nd and 4th place teams from the competition.
  • Little Rock once again demonstrated how far they've come in barely half a decade of existence. 
    • All-American Stephen Little went 4-0 and Nasir Bailey, Jordan Williams and Brock Delsignore all went 3-1 and will likely maintain their lofty rankings. 
    • Bailey and Williams both lost to higher ranked wrestlers from Cal Poly: #4 Zeth Romeny and #8 Chance Lamer, respectively, as the Mustangs continue to show off their podium contenders. 
  • South Dakota State was in a day 1 slugfest with Penn. The Quakers won four of the first five bouts, including two upset wins at 125 and 133, but the Jackrabbits prevailed by sweeping the final five bouts. 
    • SDSU's redshirt freshmen twins from Utah, Moses and Marcus Espinoza-Owens, both picked up ranked wins while subbing for the presumed starters of Cobe Siebrecht and Drake Rhodes at 157 and 165 respectively. 
  • We saw Drexel's four-time national qualifier #19 Mickey O'Malley for the first time since early December. He dropped his only bout of the weekend to Wyoming's very tough #12 Joey Novak, 8-0. 
  • With Jore Volk sadly out for the rest of the year, Novak becomes Wyoming's highest ranked wrestler. The true sophomore went 5-0 on the weekend and runs his season record up to 11-3. 
  • The Cowboys went 3-2 on the weekend en route to their 6th place finish. 
    • The second win on Friday gave Wyoming head coach Mark Branch 142 career wins at the helm of the Cowboys, the most in school history! Congrats Coach Branch!
  • There were some great battles at 174lbs under the UNI Dome. 
    • Penn's Nick Incontrera went 5-1, beating Ohio's Garrett Thompson and losing to Cade DeVos of SD State. 
    • DeVos beat Nick but lost to UNI's Jared Simma and Central Michigan's Alex Cramer. 
    • Cramer went 4-0, which also included a win over Thompson. 
    • Thompson took those two losses but did pick up a win over Simma. 
    • Simma went 2-1, also picking up a win over Northern Colorado. 
    • Good luck with all that, rankers!
  • Andrew Alirez was back on the mat for Northern Colorado. He picked up a forfeit and then a pinfall against Wyoming on day 1. He did not return for day 2 of the tournament. 
    • Stevo Poulin went 4-0, including a ranked win over UNI and is now 14-1 on the season. 
  • A certain NCAA champion with a penchant for deadlifting was also back in action. AJ Ferrari went 4-0 as he tries to make it back to NCAAs for the first time since 2021. Mr Fast Twitch is 9-0 on the season though so far he only has two ranked wins and none in the top 20. 
  • I'm leaving plenty out but there's only so much NWCA Multi Divisional National Duals I could get to in one blog post. I encourage everyone to check out Flo's social media channels where we've been posting about all the divisions all weekend long! 

The Dual Of The Century, of the Week

Nebraska Bounces Back With A B1G Home Win Over Minnesota, 21-13

With so much National Duals talk I nearly forgot about the DotCotW. But then I didn't! And there was plenty of competition for that coveted DotCotW designation. 

The Huskers hosting the Gophers had it all, though. 19 ranked wrestlers (potentially 20 when the next set of rankings come out), upsets, dramatic individual bouts, and the home team prevailing after suffering a tough loss in their previous outing (Nebraska lost to UNI 24-9 last Sunday). Below is the box score. 

157: #5 Antrell Taylor (NEB) over #11 Tommy Askey (MINN) (SV-1 4-1) 

165: Christopher Minto (NEB) over #9 Andrew Sparks (MINN) (Dec 5-4) 

174: #15 Lenny Pinto (NEB) over #25 Clayton Whiting (MINN) (Dec 9-3) 

184: #4 Max McEnelly (MINN) over #7 Silas Allred (NEB) (MD 16-6) 

197: #10 Isaiah Salazar (MINN) over #27 Camden McDanel (NEB) (MD 8-0) 

285: #1 Gable Steveson (MINN) over #29 Harley Andrews (NEB) (TF 19-4 3:32) 

125: #8 Caleb Smith (NEB) over #5 Cooper Flynn (MINN) (Dec 2-0) 

133: #19 Jacob Van Dee (NEB) over #10 Tyler Wells (MINN) (Dec 4-1) 

141: #6 Brock Hardy (NEB) over #8 Vance Vombaur (MINN) (Dec 12-10) 

149: #5 Ridge Lovett (NEB) over #22 Drew Roberts (MINN) (Dec 5-0)

The first hero for the Huskers was redshirt freshman Chris Minto from Cape Coral, Florida with a top ten upset over #9 Andrew Sparks by a single point. I also love that Nebraska now goes back to back with Minto and Pinto at 165 and 174. I wish more teams had starters whose names rhyme. 

That set things up for Caleb Smith and Jacob Van Dee to get back-to-back upsets to seal the deal for Nebraska. Van Dee's win had to feel particularly sweet as Wells majored Van Dee at NCAAs last March. 

Minnesota's Olympic gold medalist Gable Steveson impressed as expected, and their redshirt freshman Max McEnelly looks more and more like the future of 184 with every match. There are three pretty good guys ranked ahead of McEnelly at the moment, but they're all seniors and the future may become the present quite soon.

 The only thing this dual didn't have was a down-to-the-wire finish, as Nebraska had the dual in hand by the time Ridge Lovett took the mat to conclude the dual with a 5-0 win over #22 Drew Roberts. Still, not a bad afternoon of entertainment for the over 3,500 fans in the Devaney Center. 

It was also Mark Manning's 300th win as Nebraska's head coach, which is insanely impressive considering the schedule Nebraska has every year. 

That said, there was a dual that did come down to the last bout that was a close second for DotCotW consideration. 

Buckeyes Survive Determined Scarlet Knights In Columbus, 17-15

Coming off a dominant 28-6 win over Indiana, Rutgers headed to Columbus, OH with a full head of steam. And they gave the Buckeyes all they could handle though ultimately Ohio State prevailed.

Ohio State had momentum going into this dual as well, coming off an impressive and convincing win over Illinois 24-9 on Friday.

Rutgers notched upsets at 125 and 133 with Peterson over McCrone and Shawver over Bouzakis to stake themselves to a 6-0 lead. Ohio State battled back, with Dylan D'Emilio, Sammy Sasso and Carson Kharchla all avoiding upsets by slim margins. 

Scarlet Knight Shane Cartagena-Walsh may have wrestled himself into the starting job at 184 with a gutsy win over #15 Ryder Rogtozke. Poznanski put Rutgers in the lead after a last-second takedown of Seth Shumate at 197 but then Nick Feldman made sure to send the over 3,700 fans in the Covelli Center home happy, as he took out fellow All-American Yaraslau Slavikouski with a third period takedown. 

In total, 8 of 10 bouts were decided by 3 points or less, including two bouts that went to tiebreakers.

Many More Things Happened

So many things happened! I'll mention as many as I can, apologies in advance for anything I missed!

How About Some Rivalry Duals?

  • Pitt beat West Virginia 25-17.
    • No major upsets but a rollercoaster of a dual, as WVU won the first three bouts while Pitt won the final four. 
    • The Panthers also announced a nice recruit singing in Vince Bouzakis. 
  • Illinois trounced Northwestern 33-7.
    • The Illini reign supreme in the Big Ten Conference in the Land of Lincoln. However, #28 Sam Cartella did shine for the Wildcats with a 6-4 upset of #11 Kannon Webster at 149. 
  • Cornell split matches with Lehigh but utilized bonus point power to win the best EIWA/Ivy rivalry currently going (it was formerly the best intra-EIWA rivalry until this year). 
    • Carter Bailey and Malyke Hines scored upset wins at 141 and 149 for the Mountain Hawks but a pin from Meyer Shapiro and a tech from Julian Ramirez put it out of reach for the Brown and White. 
    • This was Cornell's only dual of the week but Lehigh beat Binghamton the day before.
    • The Mountain Hawks were also without the services of All-American Ryan Crookham, who it seems suffered an injury recently, though the Lehigh coaching staff is hoping to see Crookham back on the mat by the postseason. 

Lehigh was one of several teams who had champs at the Lehman Open hosted by Franklin & Marshall. The Mountain Hawks had had three champs: Luke Stanich and Max Brignola both won while redshirting and competing unattached at 141 and 165 while JT Davis won 197. 

Another redshirt having an excellent season is Ohio State true freshman Ben Davino, who won 133. Ohio State has a national qualifier at 133 in Nic Bouzakis so there's no campaign to pull Davino's shirt now, but if there were to be one, may I suggest the slogan "uncork da vino"? It's a play on Ben's last name and the Italian word for wine, if that wasn't obvious. 

Elsewhere (Yes, More Things Happened Yet!)

Maryland upset Michigan and the team partied with Coach Clemsen!


The Coache's poll had Michigan at #10, making this the first top 10 win for the Terps since 2009 and the first top 10 win for an unranked Maryland team since 2007. Pretty big deal!

Maryland then beat Michigan State the next day to complete the Big Ten Mitten State Sweep. Turtle Power indeed. 

North Carolina registered perhaps their first signature win of the Koll Era with a 20-17 home win over Virginia Tech. 

Spencer Moore, Josh Ogunsanya and Gavin Kane beat VT's All-Americans at 125, 174 and 184, then Lachlan McNeil put UNC on top for good (the dual started at 165) with a tech fall. 

Stanford is still without the service of Nico Provo and had to forfeit 125 in their dual with Missouri but still won the dual 27-15. Mizzou has been stung badly by the injury bug this season. 

The Virginia Duals turn 44! The venerable institution returned to the Hampton Coliseum for another high school + college wrestling dual-fest. Only three D1 duals on the docket this year, however. Iowa State beat both Rider and Bucknell, while Bucknell defeated Rider in the other leg of the round-robin. Paniro Johnson was back down at 149 where he beat #18 Sammy Alvarez of Rider 2-1. ISU's #16 Evan Bockman beat the Broncs' #17 Isaac Dean in one of the highest-ranked matchups of the event. 

The Cyclones also defeated West Virginia on Wednesday, their toughest dual of the week.

Penn State and Iowa both pitched shutouts. The Nittany Lions blanked Michigan State 55-0 (leaving just 5 potential points on the table!) and Iowa bageled Wisconsin 45-0, just in case anyone was wondering how those teams did. 

Finally, due to travel delays, Oklahoma State and NC State had to postpone their dual until Monday. 

Heavy Metal Matness

A regular segment of the Roundup in which I, inspired by a reader, compare D1 college wrestling teams to heavy metal bands. 

Today I will compare Northern Iowa to Megadeth. 

Few events loom larger in heavy metal thrash lore than Dave Mustaine getting fired from Metallica in 1983 just days before they started recording their first album, Kill 'Em All. 

Mustaine's brief tenure in Metallica may have felt like a loss to him at the time (and then especially after 1991 when Metallica sold a billion records with the Black Album), but it was metal fans' gain, as Mustaine would now be armed with one of mankind's oldest and most powerful motivators: spite. 

That motivation led Mustaine to quickly form Megadeth in an effort to out-metal Metallica. Though he never quite succeeded in his quest to outshine his former bandmates, that chip on Mustaine's shoulder became the creative building block that produced 16 studio albums and counting, a catalog that includes some of the genre's most artistically celebrated and culturally revered works.

And in the same way that music is in a better place with Mustaine fronting Megadeth, the wrestling community as a whole is the beneficiary of Doug Schwab leading Northern Iowa to national power status. 

Understandably, Schwab and others of his ilk blanche at the term "mid-major", especially with zoomers calling everything they don't like "mid". And while UNI as an institution may have a fraction of the endowment of their "Power 5" in-state rivals (UNI has about 163 million in the bank compared to Iowa State's 1.9 billion and Iowa's 3.3 billion) endowments don't wrestle matches. 

Fancy facilities are nice and I don't think any program would turn down a donor's gift for an upgrade, but it's the team that matters: the coaches and competitors and training partners. Besides the mat and pair of shoes for everyone, you don't need much else (not that it isn't nice to have). 

In that way, Megadeth and UNI are also alike, as their leaders are not interested in reasons why they can't be the best heavy metal band/college wrestling program in the world. They've set their minds to doing just that, circumstances be damned. 

Also watching Megadeth perform and Northern Iowa compete in person rules and I recommend everyone do so if they have the opportunity. 

What Would YOU Like To See In This Blog? 

It wouldn’t exist with you so I implore you to provide feedback! 

Send all suggestions, requests, commendations and condemnations to me at [andrew.spey@flosports.tv]. I’m also usually available on Twitter (@speywrestle). News that you'd like to see in this blog is the most appreciated feedback, but proofreading and spell-checking assistance is also welcome! Pobody's nerfect, least of all your humble blogger! 

Thank you for spending your time reading the Roundup. You will still have time to watch football later, I promise!