Carter Starocci (Penn State) looks for the fall over Philip Spadafora (Maryland) during a dual meet in February 2021. Image courtesy of Penn State Sports Information.
We are less than a month into the offseason after the 2021 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships unfolded last month at Enterprise Center in St. Louis.
Despite the infancy of the 2021 NCAA wrestling offseason, the rumor mill is in full swing. Projections are already being made about how the 2022 season will shake out.
One such rumor is that the 174-pound weight class could see a few notable additions to the field. In 2022 174 pounds could be one of the country's deepest weights.
In 2021, the 174-pound class, much like the 125-pound and heavyweight classes, felt as if there was a fairly wide gap between the No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3-rated wrestler and the remainder of the field.
At 174, down the stretch, it felt as if the race for a national title was down to Penn State's Carter Starocci, Iowa's Michael Kemerer, and possibly a "dark horse" candidate like Mikey Labriola, Logan Massa, or Demetrius Romero, all three of whom are talented. A healthy Dustin Plott would have been a sight to see in St. Louis were it not for injury troubles.
In 2022, rumors regarding the 174-pounders have emerged. Supposedly, 2019 165-pound champ Mekhi Lewis and 2021 165-pound NCAA gold medalist Shane Griffith, and possibly two-time All-American and two-time 165-pound top-four placer Evan Wick plan to bump up 174 next year.
Additionally, as NC State's four-time All-American Hayden Hidley announced to the wrestling world in March, he is moving up two classes to 174 to be his brother Trent's primary practice partner.
Should these rumors come to fruition, that means that at least three former national champions, plus Kemerer, a 2021 runner-up, will be in the same field.
These are rumors at the end of the day, and we are still many months out from the 2022 season getting underway, but there are rumblings that this could be one of the deepest weights in recent memory.
Some have already pondered that this possible 174-pound field in 2022 might warrant a comparison to the famed 149-pound bracket of 2008.
In 2008, Brent Metcalf, Bubba Jenkins, Jordan Burroughs, Josh Churella, Darrion Caldwell, J.P. O'Connor, Dustin Schlatter, and Lance Palmer were all slugging it out at the same class. These eight middleweights had a combined six NCAA golds and a smattering of other top-three NCAA finishes among them.
Only time will tell what the field at 174 looks like by November when the season begins, but 174 will likely be one of the most improved, deepest weights across Division I from last year.
However, in the interest of playing devil's advocate, we have seen a similar narrative like this play out before. In 2021, for instance, the 133-pound field was heralded for its projected depth. In hindsight, those highly anticipated offseason projections for 133 did not materialize the way many had hoped. Both Nick Suriano and Stevan Micic did not return to the college mat. Similarly, a couple of other studs like Sebastian Rivera, Austin Gomez, and others moved to a new weight or didn't participate in the 2021 campaign for COVID-19-related or health reasons.
By the 2021 postseason, the 133-pound class, while still incredibly deep, was a watered-down version of what we hypothesized back in summer 2020.
Hopefully, history does not repeat itself in 2022, and the 174-pound class is as electric as it has the potential to be. As it stands now, the NCAA wrestling ecosystem should be collectively salivating over its potential star power at 174 pounds in 2022.
With that, it's worth mentioning that regardless of how the 174-pounders come to be, the 2022 NCAA campaign might be the most challenging field across all weights the sport has ever seen. With the universal additional free year of eligibility, the pool of Division I grapplers is larger and more talented than ever before.
Either way, the 2022 season should be a fun one any way you choose to look at it. The question is, will it be the best ever?
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