Dave Hart, his father and his brothers finally broke one too many things while wrestling in the living room.

So they moved the kitchen table and the dishwasher, got a wrestling mat, and continued their competitions on the kitchen floor -- with Mom's blessing.

"Mom's the greatest," said Hart, a 167-pounder. "We have a wrestling mat in the kitchen and a weight bench in the living room. Sometimes she just cooks around us."

Assistant coach John Fritz thinks Hart's aggressive style of wrestling is something he was born with -- and with Dad a wrestling coach, that's probably true. But it was surely developed on the Hart kitchen floor.

And it was surely evident Saturday night, when Hart earned six near fall points before pinning Lehigh's Adam Smith at 4:42.

"He was really enjoying himself out there -- he was happy to be wrestling," Fritz said. "For us to have any shot of winning a national championship, we need everybody on the team to wrestle like that."

The first time Hart trapped Smith for near fall points, in the first period, he knew he wouldn't get the pin.

"He wasn't in enough pain for me to pin him," Hart said. "You've got to get him hurting, or shut off his breath or something."

Hart got the pain he needed in the next period, when he turned Smith with an armbar, earned three more near fall points, and pinned him at 4:42.

"I'm always working for a pin," Hart said. "I just want to beat him up; I don't want to stop."

Hart wore a pad to protect his shoulder, which he separated in the final seconds of his match against Iowa four weeks ago. The pad requires tape all over his shoulder and side to stay on.

Against Lehigh, Hart also had a patch on his chin to cover a cut he was afraid would start to bleed during the match. Hart didn't want the referee to stop the match to clean up the blood, because he'd lose momentum.

And before his matches this weekend, Hart wore socks on his hands; his hands get ice cold before he wrestles, and assistant coach Hachiro Oishi told him covering them might help.

"I look kind of like an idiot," Hart said, laughing.

Because Hart had never before missed a match because of injury, he wasn't sure how he'd react after missing four weeks.

"If it was up to him, he would have been in there three or four weeks ago," Fritz said. "But that isn't what would have been best for him."

Hart turned out to be underaggressive in his first match, a 5-5 draw with Lock Haven's Ron Coffel on Friday night. After battling to a 3-3 tie at the end of the first period, Coffel rode Hart for the entire second period.

"I was sluggish," Hart said. "I wasn't really ready to wrestle until the third period, and by then there was nothing I could do about it."

But Saturday night, he earned the Ridge Riley Award, presented to the top Penn State wrestler of the evening, for the third time this season.

"They give you (a plaque) and then they take it away from you," Hart said. "The first time I won it, I tried to walk away with it and they said, 'No, you don't get that now.' "