The Nittany Lions had five finalists in this year's NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships, all of whom were top ten overall recruits coming out of high school. Four of those were rated as top five recruits, including national champions Nico Megaludis and Zain Retherford. In addition, the Penn State lineup featured two other top ten recruits, Jimmy Gulibon and Nick Nevills; Gulibon fell just short of All-American honors in 2016, while Nevills failed to qualify for the national tournament after missing almost all of the season due to injury.
On the other side of the ledger, Penn State got a second All-American finish from Jordan Conaway, who was not a top 100 recruit when he graduated from high school; Conaway was ranked nationally in the 112-pound weight class. This shows two additional important points of collegiate wrestling programs and recruiting: the ability to develop and improve the prospects brought into your program, along with the ability to project success for productive prep wrestlers (Conaway won state in Pennsylvania's big-school division as a senior) that might enter college slightly less touted.
As emphasized the last year, having the type of roster talent that is present at Penn State creates a higher margin for program success should top prospective wrestlers fail to meet pre-conceived expectations. The more stars a team brings into the program, the more likely it is for the proper number of them to emerge into key contributors.
While there are some excellent recruiting hauls here in 2016, let's not overreact and say that it guarantees program success. What is more accurate to say is that strong recruiting hauls create positive momentum for a program, but ultimate end-game results may end up being a different story. Even though the high performers in college generally come from the subset of high profile prospects, being a high profile recruit entering college is no guarantee of strong collegiate performance, especially when considering the full career.
InterMat Recruiting Class Rankings
1. North Carolina State
2. Penn State
3. Iowa State
4. Iowa
5. Lehigh
6. Nebraska
7. Purdue
8. Minnesota
9. Rutgers
10. Ohio State
11. Stanford
12. Cornell
13. Virginia Tech
14. Lock Haven
15. Virginia
16. Wisconsin
17. Oklahoma State
18. Illinois
19. Pittsburgh
20. Central Michigan
21. Princeton
22. Northern Iowa
23. Drexel
24. Utah Valley
25. Michigan State
Below is a breakdown of each ranked recruiting class.
Hayden Hidlay is one of five top 100 recruits for North Carolina State (Photo/John Sachs, Tech-Fall.com)Top 100 recruits: No. 9 Nick Reenan (Wyoming Seminary, Pa.), No. 13 Hayden Hidlay (Mifflin County, Pa.), No. 18 Trent Bullard (Archer, Ga.), No. 42 Daniel Bullard (Archer, Ga.) and No. 75 Tariq Wilson (Steubenville, Ohio)
Other ranked recruits: Tommy Cox (Deer Park, N.Y.) and Chris Diaz (Archer, Ga.)
Additional notable recruits: Three-time state champion Kellen Devlin (Amherst, N.Y.), NHSCA Senior Nationals champion Codi Russell (Collins Hill, Ga.) and Super 32 placer Wade Cummings (Downington East, Pa.)
Commentary: This is the second straight year that a non-traditional program has earned the top recruiting class ranking, following Arizona State last year. The Wolfpack have the momentum of a most excellent 2015-16 regular season that included dual meet wins at Oklahoma State and Iowa. This recruiting haul further validates the work that Pat Popolizio and his assistants have done in Raleigh over a short period of time. Middleweights are abound with Hidlay, Reenan and the Bullard's; while lowerweights are addressed by Wilson, Cox, and the three lesser heralded but notable recruits.
2. Penn State
Top 100 recruits: No. 1 Mark Hall (Apple Valley, Minn.), No. 2 Nick Suriano (Bergen Catholic, N.J.), No. 7 Mason Manville (Wyoming Seminary, Pa.) and No. 92 A.J. Nevills (Clovis, Calif.)
Commentary: Penn State just won a national title, their fifth in six years, and has three of the nation's top ten recruits coming to Happy Valley in the fall. Somehow I think things will be just fine for the Nittany Lions despite not getting the No. 1 recruiting class, which was driven by the quantity of quality recruits in the haul that North Carolina State brought in. Suriano will probably be called into immediate service at 125 where he becomes an All-American contender, Hall and Manville will become assets in the middle of the Penn State lineup sooner rather than later, and Nevills provides quality depth in the upperweights. Penn State returns three of their five national finalists in 2016-17, and will replace Conaway in the lineup at 133 with impact transfer Jered Cortez.
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