Can Iowa men’s wrestling catch Penn State? Can anyone?

Is Penn State bad for men’s wrestling?

That was a common question during Iowa’s heyday as the king of college wrestling. Were the Hawkeyes bad for wrestling when they won 18 NCAA team titles between 1978 and 2000, including a streak of nine in a row that ended in 1987?

Of course not. Ditto Penn State today.

The Nittany Lions are the unquestioned king right now with a team this season that looks impossible to beat. They are 12-0 going after Sunday’s 35-0 win over Maryland and had won six of those duals by shutout, including a 39-0 whitewash of No. 19 Michigan.

They lost just one bout in four other duals and won eight of 10 matches in a 30-8 dismantling of Iowa just over a week ago.

That’s impressive stuff. That’s dominance, the bedrock on which Dan Gable built the Hawkeye program upon.

Penn State has won three straight national titles under Cael Sanderson and seven of the last nine contested NCAA meets.

Is it a bad thing when one team dominates a sport? I argued “back in the day” Iowa’s dominance was a good thing, something other programs could reach for — and they did.

Minnesota, under J Robinson, took a turn. Oklahoma State, always a contender, had its runs under John Smith. Ohio State reached the top under Tom Ryan in 2015.

After that loss to the Nittany Lions and an unexpected but thrilling, come-from-behind win over Nebraska on Friday, the Hawkeyes are a few notches below Penn State right now.

But don’t tell any Hawkeye in a black-and-gold singlet that mountain is too steep to climb.

“To win a national title as a team, we need most of the guys in the finals, we need more national champions,” Iowa 149-pounder Kyle Parco said after Friday’s win over the Cornuskers.

“I think we can do that.”

Really?

Iowa didn’t look like a title contender Friday, splitting the 10 bouts against the Cornhuskers and needing a last-second pin from Stephen Buchanan at 197 and a major decision from heavyweight Ben Kueter to pull out a 19-16 win over a very good Nebraska team.

Parco said the Hawkeyes are operating at about “60 to 70 percent” right now and there definitely are holes in this lineup. But there are a few weeks before the Big Ten tournament in Evanston, Ill.

Is there time enough to close that gap? Parco thinks there is.

“I’m confident in my team that they are going to take those mistakes” and learn, he said.

Iowa Coach Tom Brands simply said his team has a lot of work to do between now and the Big Tens on March 8-9.

“It’s a 10-cylinder engine and it’s running on — pick your number,” he said. “We’ve got to get more cylinders running in this 10-cylinder engine.”

It a very steep challenge to catch the Nittany Lions in 2025, but I’ve never met a wrestler who would back down from a fight, no matter the odds.

It seems highly unlikely Iowa — or any team for that matter — will be able to catch the Nittany Lions by March. It’s not impossible if enough teams — Ohio State, Northern Iowa, North Carolina State among many others — can chip away at Penn State’s lineup in Philadelphia, site of this year’s national championships.

But ...

There’s always next season and the season after that. One program winning nine NCAA titles in a row probably will never happen again. But what’s it going to take to climb that steep hill?

It starts with recruiting — and Iowa picked up a big one last week when Bo Bassett of Johnson, Pa., the top-ranked wrestler in the 2026 class, picked the Hawkeyes over his home state Nittany Lions and others.

According to published reports, Iowa also snagged two-time New Jersey state champion Harvey Ludington over the weekend. He’s the nation’s top-ranked 190-pounder in the 2025 class, according to Flowrestling.

Throw in the likes of freshman Miguel Estrada, who battled toe-to-toe with Nebraska’s fourth-ranked Antrell Taylor on Friday, as well as Angelo Ferrari, Gabe Arnold and Kueter and the future looks hopeful.

Now comes the development part, another bedrock of this program establish by Gable so many years ago.

The chased have become the chaser and it’s time to start moving.

Comments: (319) 398-5861; jr.ogden@thegazette