It will be a while before we know if Penn State wrestling true freshmen Marcus Blaze and PJ Duke are as good as advertised.
For that to be true, they’ll have to become multi-time national champions and have success on the world stage because, fair or not, those are the expectations some left on them coming out of high school.
But right now, the two have been everything Penn State fans could ask for, and they proved it again in their Carver Hawkeye Arena debuts Friday night in Iowa City. Carver can be an intimidating place for anybody to wrestle, let alone teenagers going against older wrestlers ranked in the top 15. But if Blaze or Duke were intimidated, they didn’t show it.
Blaze, ranked No. 4 at 133 pounds, took on No. 8 Drake Ayala and gutted out a 4-2 win.
Duke, ranked No. 3 at 157, took on No. 12 Jordan Williams and also gutted out a 4-2 win.
Coach Cael Sanderson made a bold claim about Blaze before the season.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.“Marcus Blaze is just one of those guys,” Sanderson said at November’s media day. “He’s as good of a wrestler as there’s ever been. Just he’s a great kid, great person, tremendous competitor. And we have all the confidence in the world in Marcus. So he’s one of those guys we’re going to say a lot. I think I say a lot throughout the years that we’re glad this guy’s on our team. One of those deals.”
Duke has a fan in another one of the best college wrestlers to ever do it.
“He won the Junior World Championship,” Kyle Dake told NSN exclusively in October. “He competed at the Senior World Championships, he competed at the U23 World Championships. For him to go out and compete at three different world championships in one summer is a lot, so for him, it’s just kind of managing what he already does really well.
“He’s still young. He has a lot of time to improve and continue to get better.”
