From CDT staff reports
ST. LOUIS — Penn State freshman Phil Davis capped one of the best freshman seasons in Nittany Lions history with a seventh-place finish and Eric Bradley battled back for fourth on the last day of the NCAA Wrestling Championships on Saturday.
Penn State stood 23rd in the team race with 26 points with Saturday’s finals still remaining. Oklahoma State had sealed its third-straight NCAA title with 133 points and was followed by a tight pack of Michigan (79), Oklahoma (73.5), Cornell (72.5) and Minnesota (72.5) in the top five.
Davis wrapped up a 4-2 run in his first NCAA Tournament with 5-0 win over Wisconsin’s Ryan Flaherty in the seventh-place match.
Davis got the opening takedown with two seconds left in the first period, rode Flaherty for the entire second period and then got another takedown in the third. The win improved his season record to 37-10, tying him with Jim Martin (1985-86) for the most wins ever by a Penn State freshman.
Davis, just the sixth Nittany Lion ever to earn All-America honors as a freshman and the first since Jamarr Billman in 1998, also became just the second Nittany Lion in the last 12 years to enter the NCAA Tournament unseeded and go on to earn All-America honors.
“For him to become an All-American as a red-shirt freshman and beat the people he beat in this tournament is just a great accomplishment, “Penn State coach Troy Sunderland said. “The thing about Phil is he is hungry and motivated to get better and better. The style Phil has on the mat, the fans love watching him wrestles and I had a lot of people out here tell me how they can’t believe how big he is and that he is just a freshman the way he wrestles.”
After a thrilling win the 184-pound consolation semifinals, Bradley met a far to familiar face in the third-place match as he took on No. 5 Brian Glynn for the second time in the tournament, third time in two weeks and fifth time on the season. The pair split the previous four meetings with Bradley defeating Glynn in the Big Ten final and Glynn winning a quarterfinal match-up earlier in the NCAA Tournament. All of the previous match-ups had been close, decided by two points or less, except for Glynn’s 6-0 win in the NCAA quarterfinal.
Bradley appeared to struggle with a sore knee and Glynn took control of the match in the first period with a takedown and a three-point near-fall. He added a takedown in the third period as Bradley was unable to score a takedown of his own and suffered a 9-3 loss.
Bradley took injury time and noticeably limped during the match. Trainers later indicated he had strained the lateral collateral ligament in his left knee.
Bradley finished the tournament with a 5-2 record, losing only to Glynn, and posted three wins against eventual All-Americans. His fourth-place finish marked the highest ever by a Nittany Lion at 184 pounds and he became the first wrestler ever from the state of New Hampshire to earn All-America honors.
“Eric just had a loaded bracket in this tournament, “Sunderland said. “He wrestled very hard, he just came up a little short in a couple of matches. Glynn just had his number out here.”
Bradley got a measure of redemption for what many felt was a snub by the seeding committee when he knocked of No. 3 seed Travis Pascoe of Nebraska in his opening bout of the day. With both men ranked in the top five all season, Bradley received the No. 4 seed in the tournament despite winning his second straight Big Ten title, while Pascoe was seeded ahead of him after being pinned in the Big 12 final.
Pascoe scored early with three takedowns in the first period, but Bradley escaped quickly each time and posted a takedown to trail 7-4 after the first period. Pascoe took down to start the second and quickly escaped, but Bradley converted a shot to cut the lead to 8-6.
Then, after another Pascoe escape, Bradley avoided a Pascoe shot. Bradley then got in deep on another single leg. Pascoe attempted several times to drag the Nittany Lion off the mat to avoid the takedown and was eventually hit with a fleeing the mat penalty that cut the lead to 9-7 going into the third.
Bradley took down to start the third period and got out quickly. He then worked Pascoe for most of the period before converting a go-ahead takedown with 30 seconds remaining. The Nittany Lion fought hard to ride-out the period, but Pascoe escaped with five seconds remaining to send the match to overtime tied at 10-10.
In the overtime period, the pair traded exchanges before Bradley converted with two seconds remaining and took Pascoe toward his back for a two-point near-fall that delivered a 14-10 victory.
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