The Penn State men’s wrestling team captured timely victories in three bouts on Friday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The No. 1 Nittany Lions won two sudden victory matches, leading to a 19-13 win over the No. 2 Iowa Hawkeyes.

At 133 pounds, Penn State’s top-ranked Roman Bravo-Young edged Iowa’s No. 3 Austin DeSanto, 3-2. Bravo-Young scored a takedown and an escape to get past DeSanto.

His victory moved the Nittany Lions’ lead to 7-0 after Hawkeye 125-pounder Jesse Ybarra fell to No. 7 Drew Hildebrandt via major decision. 

“I thought he did a nice job,” Penn State head coach Cael Sanderson said of Bravo-Young’s performance. “I mean, DeSanto is a tough kid to wrestle. I mean, he was shooting right on the whistle, over and over and over again, and not letting Roman move his feet at all. But I mean, Roman was fine in those positions and didn’t look like he was really that close to getting scored on.”

The 141-pound bout featured a rematch of the 2021 NCAA Tournament Finals with Penn State’s Nick Lee and Iowa’s Jaydin Eierman.

Lee defeated Eierman, 6-4, in sudden victory.

Eierman fell behind, 4-2, in the third period, but scored a takedown with 14 seconds remaining in regulation to send the match to overtime. Lee was one second away from securing the riding time point to win the match in regulation.

However, just nine seconds into the first sudden victory period, Lee tallied the winning takedown. 

“He gave up the takedown [with little time left],” Sanderson said of Lee. “You know, great job by Eierman to send it into overtime, erase the riding-time point and then like, you know, ‘No one’s won yet.’ So, just keep rolling, but I thought that was a good match between both guys.”

Penn State had a 10-0 lead over Iowa three bouts into the match. But three consecutive Hawkeye wins — with one bonus point courtesy of No. 5 Alex Marinelli’s major decision victory over No. 11 Brady Berge — got Iowa and Penn State tied at 10 points apiece after six bouts.

The Hawkeyes and Nittany Lions had another national championship rematch at 174 pounds, as No. 2 Michael Kemerer took on Penn State’s No. 1 Carter Starocci. 

In the second sudden victory decision of the night, the pair traded escapes in the second and third periods. Kemerer nearly scored a match-winning takedown at the end of the third period, but referees reversed the call, saying time had expired.

Ultimately, Starocci won the match when he escaped in the first tiebreaker period.

“I think time had expired is what the call was, right?” Sanderson said of Kemerer’s reversed takedown. “We thought the time had expired, but you gotta look at the video. But yeah, there were a lot of really tight, weird situations like that. That’s a tough match to officiate … Lots of tough calls to make, a lot of great wrestling. These guys have seen each other, you know, multiple times, just tightens things up even more.”

Iowa trailed by three points after Kemerer’s loss, and the deficit proved to be too much for the Hawkeyes as they dropped two of their last three matches.