3/22/2024 football Edit

Penn State clinches 12th NCAA team title on Friday night

Dylan Callaghan-Croley • Happy Valley Insider

Editor

For the third straight season and the 12th time all-time, the Penn State Nittany Lions have won the NCAA Wrestling Team championship, clinching their national championship on Friday evening during the semifinal bouts.

At the time of their national championship being clinched, Penn State haad 117.5 points, a significant advantage over Arizona State's 59.5 points. Michigan in third place hadd 57.5 points while Iowa State and Iowa sat at 56.0 and 55.5 points respectively in fourth and fifth place.

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For Penn State, the national championship continues what has been the best dynasty in all of sports over the last 13 years with 11 of their 12 national championships coming since 2011.

The program's first national championship came in 1953, it would take 58 years until the program captured its second in 2011 but since that second national title, it's been pure domination by the Nittany Lions.

They would win again each year between 2011-2014 before failing to do so in 2015. They picked up right where they left off in 2016, winning another four straight through 2019. After the 2020 national championships were canceled and failing to win in 2021, the Nittany Lions have won each of the last three national championships.

As a program, Penn State sits comfortably in third place all-time with their 12 national titles but still have 12 more to go to catch Iowa's 24 national championships which ranks second all-time and Oklahoma State's best of 34 national championships.

Penn State head coach Cael Sanderson ties legendary Oklahoma State head coach E.C. Callagher for the second most national championships as a head coach with 11. The only coach ahead of Sanderson now is someone that Sanderson is very familiar with chasing and being associated with, legendary Iowa wrestler and wrestling coach Dadn Gable, who led the Hawkeyes to 15 national championships as a head coach.

For the university as a whole, it is Penn State's 54th national championship all-time including the 30th national championship for a men's program. That number puts the university fifth all-time in the country behind Stanford (134), UCLA (121), USC (121), and Texas (57).