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Iowa State University Athletics
2023-24 Cyclone Wrestling Season in Review
04.11.2024 | Wrestling
AMES, Iowa -Â Iowa State's 2023-24 season was its most successful under seventh-year head coach Kevin Dresser. The Cyclones won tournament titles at the Cliff Keen Invitational and Big 12 Championship before a fourth-place finish at the NCAA Championships, their best since 2010.
David Carr ended his career by winning his second national championship while three other Cyclones - Evan Frost, Anthony Echemendia and Casey Swiderski - also earned All-America honors.
PROGRAM ON THE RISE
Iowa State finished in fourth place at the NCAA Championships with 68.5 team points, it's best finish and point total since 2010. ISU placed four wrestlers on the podium, its most since 2009.
Kevin Dresser inherited a program that scored one point and finished tied for 57th at the 2017 NCAA Championships. Since then, Iowa State has finished T-45th, 16th, T-13th, 17th, 11th and 4th at the NCAA Championships.Â
Iowa State had no conference champions in 2017 and failed to have a wrestler reach All-American status. Since then, Dresser has produced 10Â Big 12 Champs, 13 NCAA All-Americans, two National Champions and has led ISU to its first Big 12 team title since 2009.
BIG 12 CHAMPIONS
The 2023-24 season saw Iowa State win its first Big 12 title since 2009. The Cyclones crowned two champions - Anthony Echemendia (141) and Yonger Bastida (285) - and finished the weekend with 152.5 team points, the fourth-most in a tournament in league history and the most ever by an ISU team in the Big 12 era.
With one less placewinner than Oklahoma State, the Cyclones still managed to outpace the Cowboys thanks to 28 bonus points compared to 13 from OSU.
CARR GOES OUT ON TOP
David Carr capped his remarkable Cyclone career with a second national title courtesy of a 9-8 victory over Penn State's Mitchell Mesenbrink in the 165-pound NCAA finals match. Carr became the 17th Cyclone to win multiple national titles and the first since 2010 (Jake Varner, 2009-10).
- His title path included wins over the No. 1, 2 and 5 seeds, and three of his five opponents in the tournament finished on the podium. He defeated his rival, Missouri's top-seeded Keegan O'Toole, in the semifinals on a takedown with 10 seconds remaining.
- Carr, along with his father Nate who won three national titles for ISU from 1981-83, are one of four father-son duos in NCAA Division I history to each win two-plus national titles.
- Carr finished his career with a 120-5 record, tied for the 15th-most wins in school history. His .960 career winning percentage ranks fourth in program history (min. 100 wins) behind Cael Sanderson (1.000), Dan Gable (.990) and Tim Krieger (.967).
- Carr is the first five-time All-American in program history and the 12th Cyclone to finish on the podium four times. The Cyclone legacy never placed worse than third at the national tournament, finishing 1-3-2-1 in his four appearances.
- Carr finished his career with a 67-0 mark in dual matches.
- Carr posted a 27-2 season record, a 40:3 takedown ratio and 19 bonus-point wins (6 WBF, 9 TF, 4 MD). The Cyclone was 10-2 against top-10 opponents during the season.
Electric factory âš¡ pic.twitter.com/hkblCRVI3B
— Iowa State Wrestling (@CycloneWR) March 23, 2024
EVERYONE SCORES AT NCAAs
This season marked the fourth time under Dresser that nine Cyclones qualified for the national tournament and ISU's sixth consecutive season with at least eight qualifiers. Iowa State was one of 12 teams nationally to send nine-plus wrestlers to the national tournament.
All nine qualifiers scored for ISU. Evan Frost (133), Anthony Echemendia (141), Casey Swiderski (149) and David Carr (165) all earned All-America honors. MJ Gaitan (174) and Yonger Bastida (285) fell in the blood round, one win shy of All-America honors.
DRESSER IS BIG 12 COACH OF THE YEAR
Kevin Dresser was named the Big 12 Coach of the Year for the second time in his seven seasons at Iowa State. Under Dresser's leadership, Iowa State has produced eight individual Big 12 champions, 13 All-Americans and two individual national titles.
BONUS POINTS ARE KEY
The Cyclone grapplers took advantage of the NCAA's new three-point takedown rule in 2023-24 and bonus points were a common theme for the ISU squad.
- ISU tallied 72 bonus-point wins (15 WBF, 29 TF, 28 MD) in 150 dual matches this season. In total, nearly 45 percent of dual/tournament matches wrestled by Cyclones this season resulted in a bonus-point win (125-of-285).
- Bonus points were the reason for ISU's tournament success this season. Iowa State won 53 matches with bonus points spread across the Cliff Keen Invitational (23), Big 12 Championship (19) and NCAA Championships (11).
- MJ Gaitan was as dynamic as they come in 2023-24 with 10 pins on the season, the most on the team and tied for the 17th-most nationally.
The chart below tracked ISU wrestler takedown totals throughout the season. (This list excludes extra matches and open tournaments).
| Season Takedown Tracker | ||
| Athlete | For | Against |
| Yonger Bastida | 102 | 6 |
| Anthony Echemendia | 96 | 12 |
| David Carr | 80 | 6 |
| Casey Swiderski | 62 | 16 |
| Cody Chittum | 60 | 19 |
| Evan Frost | 56 | 22 |
| MJ Gaitan | 53 | 28 |
| Will Feldkamp | 37 | 38 |
| Kysen Terukina | 36 | 24 |
| Julien Broderson | 17 | 17 |
| Jacob Frost | 10 | 3 |
| Caleb Helgeson | 9 | 9 |
| Zach Redding | 6 | 4 |
| Nando Villaescusa | 4 | 1 |
| Jason Kraisser | 2 | 3 |
| Ethan Perryman | 2 | 4 |
| Connor Euton | 2 | 2 |
| Tate Naaktgeboren | 1 | 7 |
| Sam Hrabovsky | 0 | 3 |
| Rowan Udell | 0 | 2 |
| McCrae Hagarty | 0 | 0 |
| TEAM | 635 | 226 |
OTHER NOTABLES
- Fan support has been crucial to Dresser's revival of the program and Cyclone fans are once again turning out in droves to watch wrestling in Hilton Coliseum. Iowa State averaged 6,690 fans per dual in Hilton during 2023-24, its highest average home attendance in the Big 12 era.Â
- The 2023 Cy-Hawk dual pulled a sell-out crowd of 14,267 to Hilton Coliseum, the fifth-largest crowd in school history. It was the 44th most attended college wrestling dual of all-time. The dual was televised on ESPN, making it the first college wrestling dual on the flagship network in the company's 44-year history.
- The Cyclones finished with a 13-2 overall dual record, a 6-1 Big 12 record and an 8-2 mark against ranked foes, losing only to No. 4 Iowa and No. 5 Oklahoma State. Iowa State finished ahead of both teams at the NCAA Championships.
- ISU finished the regular season ranked No. 5 in the NWCA Coaches Poll, its third consecutive season finishing with a top-five mark. The Cyclones have gone 32 consecutive weeks ranked inside the top 10, including 10-straight weeks inside the top five.
- Iowa State won its first Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational team title since 1996, and fifth overall, in December. Bastida was ISU's lone individual champion in the tournament and was the first Cyclone champion since 2014.
- ISU won its pool at the Collegiate Duals in Nashville, Tenn. with victories over No. 13 Pittsburgh, Little Rock and No. 5 Cornell.
The read the full end-of-season notes packet, click here.
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Kevin Dresser Interview (NCAA Championships Session 6)
Saturday, March 21
Kevin Dresser Interview (NCAA Championships Session 4)
Friday, March 20
Yonger Bastida Press Conference (Semifinals)
Friday, March 20
Yonger Bastida Interview (NCAA Championships, Session 3)
Friday, March 20
