Predicting where each Penn State starter will be seeded in the 2025 NCAA Wrestling Championship brackets

Penn State wrestling is sending all 10 starters to next week’s NCAA Championships. The action starts eight days from now. But, the latest step on the road to nationals takes place tonight. A bracket reveal show will stream live on NCAA.com. It starts at 8 p.m. ET. By 8:30 p.m., or possibly sooner, we will know the seed number for each Nittany Lion and also who his first opponent will be. Before that, we take a crack at predicting the seeds below by breaking the group into three different categories.

The no doubt about it club

This group of Penn State wrestlers won’t have to worry about which seed number they will end up with. That part of things will be guaranteed. All they’ll learn tonight is who their first opponent will be.

This category starts with sophomore Tyler Kasak. The first-time Big Ten champ will be the top seed at 157 pounds. One weight class later, redshirt sophomore Mitchell Mesenbrink will be on the top line at 165 pounds.

At 174, junior Levi Haines is a shoo-in for the No. 2 seed behind only Missouri’s Keegan O’Toole, who beat him at the Collegiate Wrestling Duals in December. At 184, graduate senior Carter Starocci will be the No. 1 seed. And, last but certainly not least, senior Greg Kerkvliet will be either No. 2 or No. 3 at 285 pounds behind only Minnesota’s Gable Steveson, who just beat him at Big Tens 10-3, and also possibly Oklahoma State’s Wyatt Hendrickson, who leads the RPI rankings and also the NCAA’s most dominant wrestler category.

Two Penn State wrestlers are in the ‘you might be a No. 1 seed, but might not’ club

And those two should not be hard to guess. Luke Lilledahl stormed to the 125-pound Big Ten title and beat former No. 1 Matt Ramos of Purdue handily along the way. That has many thinking that the freshman will rise to the top seed line just like teammate Braeden Davis did a year ago. But, it’s no guarantee. Eddie Ventresca of Virginia Tech, the 125-pound ACC champ, has a claim for the top spot. Those two figure to be Nos. 1 and 2 in the bracket.

If you look at the lay of the land and think seeding 125 and 133 (more on that soon) is hard, we encourage you not to take a look at 141 if you’ve already eaten today. It is an impossible task to determine how the round-robin results in the Big Ten plus some losses outside of it will all equal out when the bracket is spit out of a computer. Senior Beau Bartlett has a case to be No. 1. He beat Ohio State’s Jesse Mendez twice this year. But, the second one came in the third place match at Big Ten, a bout neither of them expected to be in. So, the Nittany Lion has a case for the No. 1 seed. But, he’s hardly guaranteed it. Nebraska’s Brock Hardy is likely the top seed if Bartlett is not.

Three Nittany Lions are in the ‘your guess is as good as ours’ club

Sophomore Braeden Davis, junior Shayne Van Ness, and redshirt freshman Josh Barr did not have the Big Ten tournaments they desired too. Davis was pinned to finish fourth at 133. Van Ness was upset in the semis but did wrestle back for third at 149. And, Barr medically defaulted to sixth at 197 after hurting his left leg in the consolation semifinals, which leaves his availability for nationals all clear. Do note that Penn State cannot substitute someone into the lineup for Barr: It’s him or no one in Philadelphia for the Lions.

These three could end up at a few different spots in their respective brackets and it would not come as a great shock. For the sake of making a prediction, we’ll put Davis somewhere between Nos. 5-7, Van Ness somewhere between Nos. 2-4, and Barr somewhere between Nos. 5-9.