CLEVELAND, Ohio – The team race at the NCAA Championships in Quicken Loans Arena remains undecided, but the finals are set. There, on live television (8 p.m/ESPN2), either the Ohio State Buckyes or the Penn State Nittany Lions will be crowned champions.

Following Saturday morning's medal round, in which three Penn State wrestlers placed compared to the Buckeyes' six, Ohio State holds a slight 6-point advantage, 130.5-124.5.

At 141 pounds, it was true freshman Nick Lee who earned PSU's first medal. Topping North Carolina State's Kevin Jack, 9-7, in overtime, Lee placed fifth.

Shakur Rasheed finished in seventh place at 197 after a 11-3 major decision over Willie Miklus of Missouri. Then heavyweight Nick Nevills concluded the round with a thrilling 7-5 decision against Maryland's Youssif Hemida. With the win, Nevills placed seventh.

What remains now is the championship round. Ohio State has two finalists in Myles Martin (184) and Kyle Snyder (285), while PSU returns all five champions from a year ago.

Here's who the Nittany Lions face and what they're saying...

HOW HE GOT HERE Zain Retherford scored bonus in his first three bouts with a pair of technical falls and a pin. He topped Kyle Springer of Eastern Michigan, 16-1 (7:00), in the opening round before pinning Maryland's Alfred Bannister in 2 minutes and 29 seconds. In the quarterfinal against Oklahoma State's Boo Lewallen the ref called an end to the match at the 5-minute mark after Retherford had built a 20-2 advantage. In the semi, North Carolina's Troy Heilman gave Retherford his closest match of his past two NCAA tournaments, falling by decision, 10-4.

CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHUP Lock Haven sophomore Ronnie Perry has been one of the Cinderella stories of the tournament after he knocked off No. 2-seed Brandon Sorensen of Iowa in the second round. It'll be his first career meeting against Retherford but the Pennsylvania natives are familiar with each other, having trained freestyle together in the off-season.

IN HIS OWN WORDS "This past summer, Lock Haven would come to our room and wrestle some freestyle with the club, the guys that were eligible through USA Wrestling," Retherford said. "So I wrestled a few times with Ronnie when he came this summer. I know he's excited, so it'll be fun."

IN HIS OPPONENT'S WORDS "I'm just trying to let it settle in right now," Perry said. "It's an amazing feeling, something I never thought I would feel to be honest. (Being an NCAA finalist) was definitely something that was a goal of mine. But it's pretty crazy right now. I don't think it's going to get super real until (Saturday night) maybe. But I'm just trying to do my best to stay relaxed and stay focused and go one match at a time."

HOW HE GOT HERE Jason Nolf overcame any questions about a lingering knee injury by ripping through the 157-pound bracket. The junior opened with a 22-7 tech fall (7:00) over Central Michigan's Colin Heffernan before topping Wisconsin's Andrew Crone, 6-1. In the most anticipated match of the quarterfinal round, he drew Iowa standout Michael Kemerer and edged his former youth wrestling buddy with a 6-2 decision. Then Nolf put up his best performance of his tournament with a dominating 16-0 technical fall in 4:28 over Ohio State's Micah Jordan in the semifinal.

CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHUP In what will be his third consecutive appearance in the 157-pound NCAA final, Nolf draws North Carolina State's Hayden Hidlay, who grew up about 30 miles away from State College, Pa., in Lewistown. In his redshirt freshman season, Hidlay has yet to beaten.

IN HIS OWN WORDS "I wrestled (Hidlay) a couple times when we were younger," said Nolf. "Not really familiar (with him now). I know he's a good wrestler, and he's strong and holds (position) well, so just got to work on getting to what I do."

IN HIS OPPONENT'S WORDS "It's going to sound strange to people, but probably up until I was about 16 years old, I had season tickets to the Penn State wrestling matches," said Hidlay. "That's kind of crazy to think about now. Once the recruiting process started opening up, I went my separate way from Penn State just because they were pretty full at that weight class at the time. I started looking at other schools, and I got attached to NC State, and I was sold on the message of, you come to NC State, you're going to compete against Iowa, Penn State, Oklahoma State every year, and we want you to be a part of that."

HOW HE GOT HERE Vincenzo Joseph's path to his second NCAA final has come with a few close matches. After opening with a 15-4 major decision against Princeton's Jonathan Schleifer, Wyoming's Branson Ashworth wrestled him to a 3-1 decision. It got closer in the next match when Joseph needed double sudden victory overtime to top Nebraska's Isaiah White, 4-2. In the semifinal, Joseph edged Virginia Tech's David McFadden, 3-1. It was the first loss of McFadden's season.

CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHUP The PSU redshirt sophomore faces two-time NCAA champion Isaiah Martinez of Illinois in what will be their fifth career meeting. Martinez, a senior, has beaten Joseph in all but one of their matches, most recently in the Big Ten final. But Joseph was victorious in this matchup a year ago when he pinned Martinez in 5:25 on the sport's grandest stage.

IN HIS OWN WORDS "Whenever me and Isaiah wrestle, it's usually a pretty exciting match, pretty offensive," Joseph said. "We're both looking forward to it. We know it's going to be a good one, and we're just ready to put on a show."

IN HIS OPPONENT'S WORDS "I'm never really upset with myself," Martinez said, recalling last year's final. "I'm brutally honest. At the end of the day, I didn't deserve to win. Maybe if we would have wrestled that match ten times that same night, I would have won, but in my mind, even if I'm losing one of those matches, I didn't put in the proper work. I didn't deserve to win, and that's what happens when you don't just turn over every stone and try to make sure that there's no stone unturned. No, I wasn't mad at myself, just more honest self-evaluation. I need to be better."

HOW HE GOT HERE Mark Hall has been steadily in control since his opening 12-2 major decision over Austin Rose of Drexel. He beat Purdue's Dylan Lydy by tech fall, 21-3 (6:54), in his next match before a 6-2 decision over Taylor Lujan of Northern Iowa. The quarterfinal match was Hall's closest of his tournament. In the semifinal, he pinned Missouri's Daniel Lewis in 6:22.

CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHUP The PSU sophomore gets a de factor rubber match against Arizona State's Zahid Valencia. A year ago in the NCAA semifinal, Hall edged the Sun Devil sophomore, 4-3, boosted by a technical violation against Valencia, which awarded Hall the differentiating point. In a preseason exhibition all-star meeting, Valencia avenged the loss using a late takedown to win, 3-2. Neither have been beaten since.

IN HIS OWN WORDS "My goal is to win (an individual) championship and team championship, and for us to win a team championship, I've got to get my first goal," said Hall. "I got my goals in sight. I know what I'm looking for, and outside of that, I mean, like I said, it's just control what I can control."

IN HIS OPPONENT'S WORDS "We're still great friends," Valencia said. "We've been wrestling each other since we were eight years old. I mean, we both know what happened (in last year's semifinal), but it was a fun match. I know he did not want to win that way, but we get another rematch in the finals. I know I'm going to leave it all out there, and he usually always does, so I think it's going to be pretty exciting for the fans."

HOW HE GOT HERE Bo Nickal started the tournament with a 16-4 major decision against Martin Mueller of South Dakota State. It's been his only bonus-point win thus far. His next three matches – respectively against Jordan Ellingwood of Central Michigan, Max Dean of Cornell and Domenic Abounader of Michigan – came by decision with an average point differential of 5 points.

CHAMPIONSHIP MATCHUP It'll be the ninth career meeting between Nickal and Ohio State's Myles Martin, both juniors. Nickal, now a three-time finalist, holds the 6-2 advantage in the series, but Martin's two wins have come when the pressure is on – first in the 2016 NCAA final and then in the semifinal of the 2017 Big Ten tourney, which was the only loss of Nickal's sophomore season.

IN HIS OWN WORDS "This would be the first time that I've wrestled him for the ninth time, so I just treat every match the same," said Nickal. "He's a really strong wrestler. He's really tough, so I'm excited to have that opportunity and to be able to go out there and compete for a national championship because that's what I trained for. It doesn't really matter who it's against, but this being our ninth time wrestling, we're really familiar with each other, and so I think that you can look at it a couple different ways. You can look at it as like, oh, we know a lot of what we're going to do. He knows what I'm going to do; I know what he's going to do. But in my mind I don't even know what I'm going to do, so if he's trying to figure it out, then good luck."

IN HIS OPPONENT'S WORDS " I guess you can call it a rivalry," Martin said. "He's really tough, I'm really tough, and it's always fun watching us compete. But when I wrestle him tomorrow, I'm just going to throw all my attacks, get on my offense. If I lose, I'll know he beat the best of me – not I wish I could have done this, I wish I could have done that. I just want to put it all out there and compete to the best of my ability with God on my side. …

"When you wrestle someone so much and you start to figure each other out. I take a little bit away from those matches, but going into a match, it's not going to be the same just because you never know what happens in wrestling. I'm just excited to see what happens. I was excited the other eight times I competed against him just to see what happened. Sometimes it went my way and sometimes it didn't, but it's wrestling, it's life, you move on from it, so I'm excited to see what happens."

125 | No. 4 Nick Suriano (Rutgers; 25-0) vs. No. 3 Spencer Lee (Iowa; 21-2)

133 | No. 1 Seth Gross (South Dakota State; 28-1) vs. No. 2 Stevan Micic (Michigan; 26-2)

141 | No. 1 Bryce Meredith (Wyoming; 33-1) vs. No. 3 Yianni Diakomihalis (Cornell; 33-1)

149 | No. 1 Zain Retherford (Penn State; 30-0) vs. No. 15 Ronnie Perry (Lock Haven; 32-3)

157 | No. 1 Trent Hidlay (NC State; 26-0) vs. No. 3 Jason Nolf (Penn State; 25-1)

165 | No. 1 Isaiah Martinez (Illinois; 18-0) vs. No. 3 Vincenzo Joseph (Penn State; 24-2)

174 | No. 1 Zahid Valencia (Arizona State; 31-0) vs. No. 2 Mark Hall (Penn State; 32-0)

184 | No. 1 Bo Nickal (Penn State; 30-0) vs. No. 2 Myles Martin (Ohio State; 31-2)

197 | No. 4 Michael Macchiavello (NC State; 21-3) vs. No. 3 Jared Haught (Virginia Tech; 21-3)

285 | No. 1 Kyle Snyder (Ohio State; 16-1) vs. No. 2 Adam Coon (Michigan; 29-1)