The drought is over. For the first time since Spencer Lee won his third and final NCAA championship (on two torn ACLs) in 2021, Iowa wrestling has another national champion in its ranks. Stephen Buchanan, Iowa’s best wrestler all season long, is a national champion after defeating Penn State’s Josh Barr, 5-2, in the championship match at 197 lbs on Saturday night.

Buchanan only spent one season in Iowa City, but he made it a memorable year in the end, grinding out a national championship in the second-to-last match of the championship session.

With the victory, Buchanan became Iowa’s ninth different national champion of the Tom Brands era at Iowa and 56th different national champion overall. He’s also the program’s first upper weight champion since Jay Borschel won a title at 174 lbs in 2010 and the first-ever Iowa wrestler to win a championship at 197 lbs. (The current weights, including 197 lbs, were implemented at the 1999 NCAA Championships; 190 lbs was the equivalent weight class prior to 197 lbs.)

The first period was an extended feeling-out period behind the second-seeded Buchanan and the fourth-seeded Barr, with neither man wanting to be too aggressive or over-commit themselves and risk a costly mistake. The period ended 0-0 and Barr chose down to start the second period.

Buchanan is a dangerous wrestler on the mat, one of the best Iowa has had since Spencer Lee at dominating opponents from the top position and twisting foes into tilts and turns for near fall points. He wasn’t able to expose Barr for any back points, but he was able to maintain his ride on Barr for nearly a minute.

Finally, with his riding time nearing a minute and the action at the edge of the mat, Buchanan was penalized a point for locked hands and Barr managed to wriggle free for an escape. In an instant, the match went from 0-0 to 2-0 Barr. But Buchanan responded immediately, grabbing hold of Barr’s ankle and pulling him down to the mat for a takedown that gave him a 3-2 lead.

“I definitely knew I needed to get something,” Buchanan said in his post-match press conference. “Off the snap, he just kind of fell into it. I’d been kind of working on that re-attack and he kind of felt his hands and I was able to get the angle and finish the shot. It just comes from the practice partners back at home, the coaches, and people that have poured into me.”

Buchanan managed to stay on top of Barr to end the period, clinging tightly to his opponent and pushing his riding time over a minute. In the third period, Buchanan started down and earned a quick escape to push his lead to 4-2 (5-2 with the riding time point).

Barr went on the offensive for the remainder of the match, but Buchanan’s defense from neutral has been top-tier all season and that was the case again here, in the biggest moments of the biggest match of Buchanan’s match. He stuffed Barr’s attacks and ran the clock down until he was — finally — a national champion.

Buchanan, who entered Saturday as a four-time All-American and the first wrestler to ever win All-America honors from three different schools (Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Iowa), improved to 26-1 this season with the victory. The win etches a permanent spot for him in the Iowa record books.

For Buchanan, the win was also the end of a long, grueling process. He wrestled this year as a grad student, in his fifth year of competition. His college career began at Wyoming in 2020; Iowa fans may remember him as Jacob Warner‘s NCAA Tournament semifinal opponent in 2022. The pain of losing that match is something that stayed with Buchanan through his career.

“You get to the semifinals twice and you get denied by it, and you have to make the journey back the next morning [in the consolation bracket],” he said. “You don’t want to wrestle those two matches, but you do and you pull through, but you’re still left with this bittersweet feeling in your stomach and your mind.”

“And you come back the next year and the same thing happens to you,” he continued. “And you finally get on a new team and you’re placed around people who pour into you, who teach you the little things that make the biggest differences. And you get on that stage and you use the things that they taught you to win, it means the world. The work that I put in, the amount of time that people put in for me, it means the world.”

That Buchanan was able to win a national championship — in Iowa’s last shot out of three this session — felt fitting. He was Iowa’s best wrestler all season, as well as its most consistent wrestler. He led the team in wins and bonus points; his bonus point wins near the end of duals were often the difference between an Iowa win or loss in those meets.

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While those lopsided wins and bonus points carried Buchanan — and the Iowa team — through the regular season and even through the opening rounds of this NCAA Tournament, as the competition stiffened in the final two rounds, the matches got slower, the points got harder to come by, and tactics became important.

Buchanan agreed with that assessment — to a point.

“Yeah, I think the tactical-ness definitely helps out,” he said after the finals. “But also: takedowns. Takedowns make a world of difference. If you’re getting takedowns and you’re believing in your offense, you win matches.”

Takedowns win matches. It’s a simple statement but that doesn’t take away from its truth. Buchanan was the only Iowa wrestler in the finals to record a takedown in his match; he was also the Iowa wrestler to win his finals match.

Buchanan also reflected on the final stop of his wrestling journey, what being at Iowa had meant for him this season and how his experienced in Iowa City molded him into the wrestler who won a national champion on Saturday.

“It’s not what I expected. I had an outside view of Iowa,” he said. “I thought it was grind, grind, grind. And then you get there and they treat you like family. Tom and Terry [Brands], they pour into you, not like a wrestler, but like their own. They care so much and they care so deeply. All of you probably don’t see what they do behind the scenes, but they’ll do everything for you, and they’re great people. You have to be there and be under them and be trained by them and learn from them and it makes a world of difference.”

As noted, Iowa had three wrestlers in the championship finals on Saturday night, but Buchanan was the only one of the three to come away with a victory. Drake Ayala (at 133) and Mike Caliendo (at 165) faced rematches of their Big Ten Tournament finals against Illinois’ Lucas Byrd and Penn State’s Mitchell Mesenbrink, respectively. Ayala and Caliendo lost those matches two weeks ago and, unfortunately, they fell short in the rematches on Saturday night as well.

Ayala actually split the two prior meetings with Byrd this season, defeating him 4-2 at the Iowa-Illinois dual in January before getting caught in a cow catcher and pinned early in the second period at the Big Ten Tournament. The finish of Saturday night’s rubber match wasn’t nearly as dramatic, but it still ended with Byrd’s hand being raised.

The 133 lb final was a match full of cautious, cagey wrestling and light on action. The match was tied 1-1 after three periods of regulation and one two-minute sudden victory period and there weren’t many great attacks to show for it, beyond a near-takedown for Byrd on the edge of the mat (ruled no takedown after video review) and a frenzied scramble at the end of sudden victory in which Ayala nearly pinned Byrd.

Ayala simply wasn’t able to get to to Byrd’s legs during the match, nor was he able to misdirect Byrd for one of his patented slide-by takedowns. The match was decided in the tie-breakers, as Ayala got an escape in the first tie-breaker to briefly go up 2-1 — only to almost immediately concede a point on a stall call against him at the edge of the mat.

The moment Ayala got dinged for wasn’t a particularly egregious example of stalling or fleeing the mat — but Ayala had been frankly pretty lucky to not receive a second stall warning in the previous nine minutes of match action. Byrd chose neutral in the second tie-breaker as his small riding time advantage from the first tie-breaker gave him the advantage in the match. Ayala wasn’t able to penetrate Byrd’s defense in the ensuing 30 seconds, just as he hadn’t been able to do so in the preceding 9+ minutes.

It stings that Ayala is an NCAA runner-up for the second straight season (he lost to Arizona State’s Richard Figueroa in the NCAA final at 125 lbs last year), but his passivity on offense and his too-cautious approach was a key factor in his undoing in both matches.

At 165, Mike Caliendo picked up his sixth career defeat against Penn State’s top-ranked Mitchell Mesenbrink. As was the case at the Big Ten Tournament, Caliendo showed that he has closed the gap on Mesenbrink and that his ability to defend against Mesenbrink’s attacks has improved. Caliendo lost the match at Big Tens 4-1 and was down only 5-2 in this bout until Mesenbrink added a late takedown off a counter to a Caliendo attack to win 8-2.

This is the sixth time recapping a Caliendo-Mesenbrink match in the last 15 months or so and it’s hard to know what else to write about these matches because they’re very much a Groundhog Day situation: Caliendo and Mesenbrink are in a perpetually repeating time loop with the same result every time. The details change a little, but the outcome doesn’t.

Caliendo has definitely looked better in the last two encounters — he seems to have more confidence in his own attacks and has definitely gotten better at defending Mesenbrink’s shots and not being overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of his offense. On the other hand, until Caliendo can actually score a takedown on Mesenbrink in one of these closer matches, it’s hard to truly think he can actually upset his nemesis. He’s narrowed the gap, but he hasn’t closed it yet.

Still, that shouldn’t take away from what was a very strong season overall for Caliendo. His march through the bracket at 165 re-emphasized what the regular season had made apparent: he’s clearly the second-best wrestler at the weight. He dispatched everyone else he faced in the regular season, often with bonus points, then did the same at the NCAA Tournament, including a win over the the wrestler who earned the 2-seed ahead of him, West Virginia’s Peyton Hall. There’s a gap between Caliendo and Mesenbrink — but there’s also a gap between Caliendo and the rest of the field at 165.