GLORIOUS WEEKEND: Princeton University wrestling star Patrick Glory, top, battles Vito Arujau of Cornell in a regular season match at 125 pounds. Last weekend, third-seeded Glory defeated second-seeded Arujau 13-5 in the semifinal at the NCAA Championships in Detroit, Mich. The win gave Princeton its first finalist in 20 years, since Greg Parker ’03 made the final at 174 in 2002. Glory was joined by junior teammate Quincy Monday (157) in the finals, giving the Tigers two NCAA finalists for the first time in program history. Both Glory and Monday went on to lose in their finals as Princeton took 16th in the team standings at the competition won by Penn State. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

By Bill Alden

It turned out to be a glorious competition for the Princeton University wrestling team as it sent six stars to the NCAA Championships last weekend in Detroit, Mich.

Princeton made program history as two of those standouts, Patrick Glory (125 pounds) and Quinn Monday (157), advanced championship finals, the first time that has happened for the Tigers. Both ended up losing in the title matches, leaving the late Bradley Glass ’53 as the lone Princeton wrestler to win an NCAA Championship as he took the heavyweight title in 1951.

In reaching the final, junior star and third-seeded Glory started his run with a 16-2 major decision over 30th-seeded Jace Koelzer of Northern Colorado in the round of 32 on Thursday. A day later, he earned 10-2 win over 14th-seeded Jakob Camacho of North Carolina State and then defeated 11th-seeded Brandon Kaylor of Oregon State 7-3 in the quarterfinals. In the semis, he faced an Ivy League rival, second-seeded Vito Arujau of Cornell, who had defeated Glory 19-6 two weeks ago in the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) final. Glory turned the tables on Arujau with a 13-5 win. The win gave Princeton its first finalist in 20 years, since Greg Parker ’03 made the final at 174 in 2002.

In the final, Glory, a native of Randolph, lost 5-3 to top-seeded Michigan grad student Nick Suriano, a fellow Garden State native, who had previously won a national title at 133 for Rutgers in 2019. Glory fell behind Suriano 4-0 and then pulled within 4-3 in the third period on three penalty points to Suriano, who received three cautions and three stalling calls over the course of the match. Suriano added an escape to push the lead back to two points with less than 30 seconds to go and held off Glory’s takedown attempts as time ran down to take the win.

The match was the second-closest match of the season for Suriano, who went 16-0 this year, as Penn State’s Drew Hildebrandt came within a point of Suriano, 2-1, during a dual in January.

Glory ended with a 20-2 record while finishing as the NCAA runner-up and becoming Princeton’s first NCAA finalist in 20 years. The All-American honor Glory earned by finishing in the top eight was his third, joining him with Matthew Kolodzik ’21 as the only Tigers in program history to earn at least three All-American honors. Glory finished sixth at the 2019 NCAAs and was a 2020 All-American honoree.

For the fifth-seeded Monday, his road to the final started with a 3-2 win over Virginia Tech’s 28th-seeded Connor Brady in the round of 32. Monday then defeated 12th-seeded Jacob Wright of Wyoming 3-2 in the round of 16 and topped fourth-seeded Ed Scott of North Carolina State 5-3 in the quarterfinals. Monday booked his place in the final by edging eighth-seeded Will Lewan of Michigan 3-2 in the semis.

In the final, Monday battled second-seeded Northwestern grad student Ryan Deakin, who took the lead with a takedown two minutes into the match before Deakin halved that with an escape coming out of that takedown and pulled even with an escape off the second-period start. From there, the undefeated Deakin pulled away to a 9-2 victory.

Monday earned his second All-American honor and finished his season with a 24-4 record, finishing as an EIWA champion and the NCAA runner-up. His final appearance, which came after earning his first four wins at the NCAAs, made it Princeton’s first time with two finalists in the same year. Deakin finished his season unbeaten at 18-0.

Princeton took 16th in the team standings at the competition won by Penn State. The Tigers tallied 38 points, its most at the NCAA Championships in program history, surpassing the 35 Princeton had in 2019. Princeton’s 16th-place finish was the sixth time in program history that the team finished in the top 20 at the NCAAs, including each of the last two times the championships were held and Princeton competed. Along with a fifth-place finish in 1951, the year Glass won his title, Princeton finished 14th in 1978, 15th in 2019, 16th in 1985 and 17th in 1984. Princeton was one of only three schools with multiple finalists, along with Penn State and Michigan.

In bringing six wrestlers to the NCAA Championships, the Tigers tied for the second-most in program history with 2019 and 2020, and behind only the seven from 2017. Along with Glory and Monday, who were NCAA qualifiers in 2019 and 2020, Marshall Keller (149) won a consolation match in his NCAA debut, as did fellow junior Travis Stefanik (184), in what was his third NCAA ticket along with 2019 and the canceled 2020 meet. Stefanik’s win was his first at the NCAAs. Freshman Luke Stout (197) won his first-round match in his debut at the meet, and sophomore Matt Cover (heavyweight) made his NCAA Championship debut as well.