ST. LOUIS — After nearly 12 hours of wrestling and two sessions of action Thursday, eight of Iowa’s ten wrestlers advanced to Friday’s NCAA Division I Wrestling Championship quarterfinals.

Iowa currently leads the field in the race for an NCAA team crown with 33.5 team points. Penn State sits in second place with 28.0 points followed by Missouri with 23.5.

Penn State’s only head-to-head victory over Iowa so far is 157-pound Brady Berge’s upset, 3-2 victory over fifth-seeded Kaleb Young in the second round. Young will face Campbell’s Benjamin Barton in the consolation bracket Friday.

Hawkeye 184-pounder Nelson Brands is the other Iowa wrestler that failed to earn a spot in the quarterfinals, as he fell to Virginia Tech’s fifth-seeded Hunter Bolen, 6-2.  Brands will wrestle North Carolina’s Devin Kane in the consolation bracket tomorrow.

Among the Hawkeyes that did advance to the quarterfinals is 197-pound junior Jacob Warner. The Tolono, Illinois, native clawed his way to the quarterfinals after narrow wins in both his first and second matches.

Against North Carolina State’s Nick Reenan in round one, Warner spent roughly 90 seconds nearly on his back. While Reenan did not get the fall, he did get four points for a near-fall.

On the edge of an upset loss, Warner wriggled out of Reenan’s grasp and earned a reversal toward the end of the first period to trail 6-2. Warner was held scoreless in the second, but he rallied in the third period to force sudden victory.

Then, 11 seconds into overtime, Warner produced a takedown to edge out the 28th-seeded Reenan, 9-7.

In the second round, Warner held Northwestern’s Evan Davison scoreless and won, 3-0.

“I think I’m the guy to beat,” Warner said Thursday night. “Two close ones, but if you look at it, I mean, besides that headlock in the that first match, they’re really not that close. On them the whole time, I was making them feel my pressure. That last match, he didn’t even sniff a score the whole time. So, he had a game plan, I went in with mine, which is just score some points. Going into tomorrow, one more. One more in the morning, that’s all I’m looking forward to. Quarterfinals in the morning, and then showing them I’m the guy to beat.”

Junior 149-pounder Max Murin also moved on to Session III’s quarterfinals after two close wins — the first of which came against Indiana’s Graham Rooks, 8-7.

Murin’s second win of the tournament proved to be one of redemption. The Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, native upset fifth-seeded Ridge Lovett of Nebraska via 5-3 decision.

Murin had previously lost to Lovett in the 2021 Big Ten Championships in State College, Pennsylvania. Murin was seeded second at the conference tournament and Lovett was seeded seventh.

“Two real gutsy wins,” Hawkeye head coach Tom Brands said of Murin. “That’s what it takes. You find a way to get your hand raised. Get on a roll here, let’s score points early and often. You know, maybe you don’t have to have it so close, but we’ll take them how we get them. Good little bit of redemption for him. We gotta be ready to go tomorrow and everybody’s in that boat. We gotta be ready to go, it’s day two coming up.”

Quarterfinal action begins Friday at 10 a.m. at the Enterprise Center.

“We gotta get ready tomorrow for eight quarterfinals and we gotta get two guys in the backside,” Tom Brands said. “It’s day two, and we gotta roll.”