Like Mad Max, the members of the No. 8 Penn State wrestling team have been "Road Warriors" this season.
The Nittany Lions (11-4, 3-3 Big Ten) added their sixth victory on the road to their resume, with a 27-8 shellacking of No. 16 Indiana Friday night in Bloomington. Penn State has won all three of its Big Ten road matches and owns five wins against ranked opponents away from Rec Hall.
Penn State opened the match on fire, winning the first four bouts without breaking much of a sweat. The Lions won the matches by a 28-9 margin, including a shutout by No. 6 Phil Davis.
"It was a good team win," Penn State wrestling coach Troy Sunderland said. "We out-wrestled a lot of the opponents, even in the close matches. We kept preaching: get in an offense and keep looking to score."
The Hoosiers (11-4, 2-4) thought they caught a break at 174 when No. 10 James Yonushonis was scratched because of an injury suffered during last Sunday's match at Iowa State. Yonushonis's replacement, Phil Bomberger, was winless in two dual matches and had an overall record of 7-6. After taking a 4-0 lead in the first period, Bomberger held on for a surprising 6-3 win against Marc Bennett.
Bomberger's win started the ball rolling on the dominating performance by Penn State. No. 1 Eric Bradley, fresh off his first loss of the season and the loss of his No. 1 ranking, got back on track with a 12-4 major decision against Justin Curran. After Davis' 6-0 win against No. 8 Brady Richardson, heavyweight Joel Edwards righted his individual ship after losing his last two matches. No. 18 Edwards defeated Dave Herman 4-2 to give the Lions a commanding 13-0 lead in team points.
"It was a good match for [Bomberger] to get back out there and get some varsity action again," Sunderland said. "If we won [at 174], then we would be favored with Bradley at 84. So getting momentum in first two matches would help Phil [Davis] at 197 ... We got all four of those match and were on a pretty good roll heading into 125."
Enter Indiana's Joe Dubuque.
Dubuque, who is No. 1 at 125, almost turned the match around when he scored a 19-3 technical fall victory against Tim Hass. After escaping the first takedown from Dubuque, the match went downhill faster than an avalanche for Hass. The score went from 2-1 to 12-2 in less than three minutes. Dubuque's victory cut the Penn State lead to 13-5.
The next match at 133 was the tipping point of the dual.
No. 9 Jake Strayer and No. 18 Andre Hernandez battled for the entire seven minutes, and Strayer held a 1-0 lead heading into the final period. Hernandez chose down for the final two minutes and was unable to escape until there was 30 seconds left in the period. But Strayer had stayed on top of Hernandez long enough to earn him the riding time point that was the decider of the match.
"Hernadez is a tough, tough kid." Sunderland said. "We knew it was going to be a battle and Jake [Strayer] did a good job. He was in on the leg attacks but were able to finish, but when Hernandez chose down [to start the third period] we just had the mindset to ride him out and get the win."
The Lions carried the momentum from the Strayer match until the final horn of the dual. Penn State won three of the last four matches, including a technical fall victory by senior DeWitt Driscoll, and eight of ten matches to secure the 21-point victory.
The win moves the Lions into a tie for fifth place with Wisconsin and also sets them up for the homestretch of the Big Ten season.
"We just got to be ready to upset some people," Sunderland said. "We just want to make sure they don't forget about the Iowa State loss [on Feb. 5] and using that to motivate them to not have a letdown in our last two matches."
