Top Penn State wrestler out for the season with an injury

Penn State wrestling lost a key contributor to its chase for a third straight national championship, Cael Sanderson announced on Tuesday. All-American and top Penn State wrestler Shayne Van Ness was declared out for the season with an undisclosed injury. What is his future moving forward, and how will this new impact the Nittany Lions title hopes?

Injury forces top Penn State wrestler Shayne Van Ness to miss season

The No. 2 wrestler at 149 was confirmed out by Penn State wrestling coach Cael Sanderson on Tuesday due to an undisclosed injury. Shayne Van Ness had started the year 3-0, and was a contender for a national championship in his weight class. Last season as a redshirt freshman, the star wrestler went 24-7 with a 48.39% bonus percentage en route to a third-place finish in the NCAA Tournament.

While Van Ness already used his redshirt in 2022, he will most likely be granted a medical redshirt for this season. That will mean that he will enter the 2025 season once again as a sophomore.

This will be something interesting to monitor moving forward, as Cael Sanderson has quite the recruiting classes coming in for the 133-157 weight classes. We could see a bit of log jam at those four weight classes, with wrestlers moving up and down to get a starting role. However, this is a good problem to have for a team trying to win a national championship.

How will Van Ness’s injury impact a 2024 national championship run?

While this may have been a devastating blow to most programs, the Nittany Lions have plenty of depth throughout their lineup. The gap between No. 1 Penn State wrestling and the next-best team is drastic. Before the injury, the Nittany Lions were projected 142 points in the InterMat tournament rankings. The second-place team was North Carolina State with 75.5.

While winning another team national championship isn’t necessarily in danger, it does put a damper on a potential record-breaking season. The most points Penn State wrestling has ever scored in the NCAA Tournament was 146.5 in 2017. The all-time record is 170 points by Iowa in the 1997 NCAA Tournament.

That record was within reach this year, as the Nittany Lions had four wrestlers ranked No. 1 to open the season, with four additional wrestlers, including Shayne Van Ness, ranked in the top three in their respective weight classes. On top of that, Mitchell Mesenbrink started the year ranked No. 16 at 165, so the Nittany Lions definitely had the opportunity to put up a historic level of points this postseason.

While the record isn’t completely out of reach, it will be much more difficult with a title contender out of the mix. Sanderson said the replacements for Van Ness are Tyler Kasak, Connor Pierce, and David Evans. We will have to wait and see if any of those wrestlers are capable of becoming an All-American and scoring for Penn State wrestling in the postseason, or if they will just be placeholders until next year.

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