WRESTLING: No. 1 Penn State Dominates Most Dominant

The NCAA tracks a stat they name "Most Dominant".  The simple explanation behind the stat is this: when a wrestler steps on the resilite, how many points does he score for his team, on average?  As a reminder:

• Fall = 6 points
• Tech Fall = 5
• Major = 4
• Decision = 3

Two things jump out from the NCAA's current Top 10 standings.  First, 40% of the top 10 are Penn Staters.  That's pretty awesome.  Second, every time Jason Nolf and Zain Retherford take the mat for Penn State, they're averaging more than a tech fall.

That is ridiculous.

In related news, here are your Big Ten top 50 "leaders" in stall warnings.  Stall warnings are issued when a wrestler stops wrestling, and purposely attempts to make the action boring and miserable.

You'll note the absence of a certain school from the top 50.

It's been mentioned by BTN color analyst Jim Gibbons several times - and it's absolutely true.  Cael and his staff have created a culture of action on the mat.  Sure, it helps having super-talented wrestlers pinning everyone they face.  But the aggressive attitude on the mat pervades the entire squad, as evidenced by the fact that no Penn State wrestler appears on the "stall" list.  Not a freshman walk-on, not a career backup, not the linebacker filling in at heavyweight, and certainly not a starter.  All of our Lions wrestle the full seven minutes.  And that makes all of them a ton of fun to watch.

One last note - as our man in SoCal Frank notes in a writeup here, according to Cael's radio show this week, a certain Nick Nevills has been medically cleared to compete.  Getting big Nick back at 285lbs would be pretty awesome.  And Mouse will be a "go" against Ohio State this Friday, at a sold-out Bryce Jordan Center.   So, yeah - Penn State seems to be getting healthy-ish, finally - and it couldn't come at a better time of the year.

Bonus Coverage

Because it's the dual we all want to see, but won't get to this year - here is Penn State vs Iowa lined up, with "Most Dominant" average points scored for all 20 wrestlers.