Cornell Wrestling Places Fourth In NCAA Championship

NCAA Final Team Scores | NCAA Final Brackets

Photo courtesy of Cornell Athletic Communications

ST. LOUIS -- Cornell wrestling finished fourth out of 64 teams with 90.5 team points in the NCAA Wrestling Championship, held at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis. Penn State won the tournament with 128.5 points, followed by Minnesota (113.5) and Iowa (103.5).

Harvard finished 30th, while Penn was close behind in 32nd.

As a League, eight Ivies earned All-American status, including five from Cornell. Junior Kyle Dake and seniors Steve Bosak and Cam Simaz won titles at 157, 184 and 197, respectively, as the Big Red crowned a school-record three NCAA wrestling champions.

Dake became the first wrestler to ever earn three NCAA titles at three different weight classes and finished his 2011-12 campaign 35-0 overall. Bosak and Simaz each won their first career championships, while Simaz earned his fourth-straight All-American honor.

Senior Frank Perrelli capped off his stellar Cornell career with a fourth-place finish at 125 pounds, while sophomore Mike Nevinger took seventh at 141.

For Harvard, juniors Walter Peppelman (157) and Steven Keith (133) placed eighth at the 2012 NCAA Wrestling Championships, earning themselves All-America status and a place on the podium.

Peppelman, a 2011 All-American, is just the seventh student-athlete in Harvard history to reach the podium in back-to-back years after placing eighth at last year's tournament. Keith, meanwhile, has earned All-America status for the first time while making his third appearance at Nationals. Peppelman and Keith are the first Crimson teammates to earn a place on the podium at the same tournament since Louis Caputo, Max Meltzer and J.P. O'Connor did so in 2007.

Penn junior Micah Burak wrestled up from his No. 11 seed at 197 pounds to earn seventh-place at the 2012 NCAA Championships. He became Penn's 26th NCAA All-American in wrestling in the process, and the third at 197 pounds.

Columbia junior Steve Santos and Princeton senior Daniel Kolodzik each fell one victory shy of earning All-American status at 149 and 157, respectively.