A victory over Oklahoma, which canceled a dual meet against the Lions last Tuesday, highlighted the wrestling team's performance at the Virginia Duals this weekend in Hampton, Va.

The Lions finished sixth in the tournament, the dual meet national championship. They faced four of the top six teams in the nation in the two-day meet, including No. 3 Iowa, No. 4 Nebraska and No. 6 Oklahoma on Saturday.

"Most people don't hit that in a season. We got that in a day," Coach Rich Lorenzo said.

Penn State opened the tournament with a 29-10 victory over North Carolina and then faced No. 1 Arizona State. The Lions lost to the Sun Devils, 25-12, in a match that wasn't as close as the score indicates because Arizona State forfeited the heavyweight match and gave Penn State six points.

Penn State defeated North Carolina State, 30-10, and Oklahoma, 26- 17, in the consolations but lost to Iowa, 22-5, in the consolation semifinal and to Nebraska, 27-9, in the fifth-place match.

"We all learned something from it," 167-pounder Jason Suter said. "We could have went into the tournament and won it and it wouldn't have meant a thing until nationals. That's what matters."

"We lost by a pretty big margin to Arizona State but a lot of individual matches were one- or two-point matches or one-move matches, where the guy gets four points on you in one move and that's the difference in the match," Lorenzo added. "Even though the final scores were a little large, a lot of individual matches could have went the other way."

Starring for the Lions were freshmen Shawn Nelson at 118 and Adam Mariano at 177; each recorded two falls. Nelson started the Oklahoma match with a pin of redshirt freshman Keith Ketchum and Mariano also got a crucial pin in that match. He pinned Kyle Scrimgsour at 2:53 to give Penn State a 20-13 lead. Nelson also lost by only two points to No. 1 Zeke Jones of Arizona State.

"The two freshmen, Nelson and Mariano, did really, really well," Lorenzo said. "They made a couple mistakes, but in your first major tournament that's going to happen to you. But they really helped us out with 12 big points against Oklahoma."

Also wrestling well was Jeff Prescott, who was ineligible for competition in the fall semester because of credit deficiencies. He erased those deficiencies and became eligible as soon as grades came out. This was his first competition since last fall.

At 126, Prescott tied Oklahoma's Chris Bollin, 6-6. Bollin beat former Lion Ken Chertow twice last year, both at NCAAs and in the dual meet.

"It was almost like a win for us, an upset," Lorenzo said.

And in an unusual match, Prescott and Iowa's Terry Brands were both disqualified after a physically-intense match nearly turned into a free-for-all. Brands, like his twin brother Tom, relies on intimidation, both verbal and physical, to put him at an advantage.

In front of the Penn State bench, Brands put a hammerlock on Prescott and put his arm at a 90 degree angle. Then, after putting Prescott on his back, Brands ripped Prescott's arm past 90 degrees. Prescott screamed and rolled back, and then kicked Brands in the face. The referee stopped the match.

"Jeff's just too hot-headed to do that to," Lorenzo said. "But you need to channel emotions . . . (and play) within rules. That's not what education is all about, that's not what life's all about. You don't come down to that person's level."

Lorenzo said he lectured Prescott after the match and criticized Iowa coach Dan Gable for not doing the same to Brands. Gable merely protested Brands' disqualification; he saw only the kick, not the arm rip, Lorenzo said.

"He (Gable) knows how cheap his kid is," Lorenzo said. "Only one person in the world is going to stop Tom and Terry Brands from being cheap and having no class and that's the coach.

"He's afraid he'll hurt their intensity level, lose the competitiveness if he tampers with them. But Brands screamed at us, crude, four-letter words. He was totally psycho, out of it. He was just in a fit of rage."

Lorenzo said Brands tried to apologize to the Lions after he calmed down.

Suter, ranked No. 8 at 167, injured his back wrestling against Oklahoma's Jason Jouret. Tri-captain Mike Bevilacqua severely bruised his heel when Arizona State's Junior Saunders threw him on the floor but wrestled the rest of his matches with a sore foot. Nelson sprained his knee and will see a doctor today to determine the extent of the injury.

"I'm a little scared about all the work we've got to do," Lorenzo said. "We face Iowa in February, we have nationals in March -- it's a long haul yet. But it's a great experience for us to have wrestled all the top teams in the country this early in January, in a dual-meet format. Everybody got a chance to wrestle. If it were an individual tournament, a lot of guys would have got knocked out and never faced the No. 1 or 2 man in the country."