December is now here, and with its coming, the season is heating up for the Penn men's wrestling team.
Yesterday, the No. 25 Quakers (USA Today/ NWCA Coaches' Poll) flew out to Las Vegas, NV to wrestle in the 24th annual Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational Tournament. The event takes place all day today and tomorrow, and is the biggest early-season date on Penn's schedule.
The Red and Blue finds itself in the powerhouse-laden, 46-team field for the second year in a row.
Last season, the squad left the Cashman Center with a 13th-place finish, but this time around it hopes to crack the top 10.
Michigan, ranked No. 3 in the country, comes in as the defending champion. The Wolverines will not find it easy to repeat, however, as four of last year's top-five finishers will return to Sin City this weekend. Last year's standouts aside, the field includes No. 2 Illinois, three of the nation's top-ten teams, and nine of the top-25.
"This tournament is almost like a preseason nationals because of the competition that's here," senior captain Matt Valenti said.
Though challenging Michigan, Illinois, and Hofstra at the top is not completely out of the question for the Quakers, the tournament will be the first true test of the season for coach Zeke Jones and his wrestlers.
"It really gives us an idea of where we are at this point in the season," Jones said. "I think our guys feel good about where they're at."
The NCAA Championship-like atmosphere out west will be a far cry from Penn's first two competitions. The Red and Blue placed second at the Brockport-Oklahoma Gold Classic in upstate New York before easily taking the Keystone Classic in the Palestra the next weekend. The team crowned four individual champions that afternoon.
Valenti, who missed all of last season to shoulder surgery after becoming an All-American, has sprinted out to a 7-0 record for the Quakers. Those were matches the No. 8 wrestler in the country should have won, though, as none of them came against ranked opponents.
The real questions will be answered when Valenti and his four teammates ranked in the top 25 in various publications meet up with some of the best in the nation on the mats in Vegas. Although he is the highest-ranked Red and Blue wrestler, Valenti will be the fifth-seeded competitor in the 133-pound weightclass, behind Edinboro's No. 1 Shawn Bunch and Wisconsin's No. 2 Tom Clum.
The tournament "is a chance to prove where I am nationally," Valenti said.
As far as the team goes, the Red and Blue feels better-prepared for the Invite than it did for its other two competitions, both in terms of the wrestlers' physical state and the technical progress that Jones has been hoping to see from his team.
"We created a little bit more tapering, so I'd like to think that, from a rest standpoint, we'll be able to compete better," Jones said. "Technically, we're still moving along. It's still December, and March is where the goal's at."
