After a whirlwind of last-chance action and the U.S. Olympic Trials, the end-of-season NCAA awards are long overdue, but nonetheless important. This year, it was as challenging as ever to highlight the top standouts amid such a deep field of talent, but after a discerning, hair-splitting process, we narrowed it down to the most-deserving candidates below.

Wrestler Of The Year - Zain Retherford, Penn State

Once the season wrapped up, NCAA fans quickly divided between who should win the Hodge Trophy: Zain Retherford or Alex Dieringer. The Hodge allows other factors to be included as award criteria, but for our purposes, we are only considering the virtues and accolades of this season. For that reason, the nod goes to Retherford.

Retherford led the nation in nearly every metric in terms of dominance. He tallied more falls and a higher bonus rate than any other NCAA champion. In addition to a better ledger, he faced and defeated more All-Americans (10) than anyone in this discussion. His run at NCAA’s was incredible as he went tech, pin, pin, pin, and major decision, in that order. Rutherford hardly slipped all year, only winning four matches of 34 by decision. With 28.5 NCAA team points scored, Zain as a one-man team would have placed 16th in the country to tie Kent State and put him ahead of Minnesota. Watching him systematically break strong opponents was almost shocking. Zain is in your face from start to finish with perfectly timed and positioned leg attacks combined with stifling top pressure and leg riding. The clamors for Dieringer don’t go unheard, but Zain was the best by every measurement for the 2015-2016 season.

Freshman Of The Year - Jason Nolf, Penn State

With Retherford and Dieringer, certainly arguments can be made for both. But I don’t think there’s much debate that Jason Nolf was far and away the most outstanding freshman this season. With only two losses this year (both to two-time NCAA champion Isaiah Martinez), Nolf put up a better bonus rate than Zain.  Of his 33 wins, only two were by decision. Furthermore, one victory was 4-1 over NCAA third-placer Nick Brascetta, while another was 7-3 over Joe Smith.
 
Freshman Myles Martin concluded his season in remarkable fashion by entering the NCAA tournament as a No. 11 seed and leaving as the champion. Despite that, his losses to Jacob Morrissey, Mike Ottinger, and Davonte Mahomes as well as Bo Nickel prevented him from garnering our Freshman of the Year honors. Martin benefitted from a far more navigable weight, whereas Nolf's class matched him against a legend on pace for four NCAA titles (who Nolf actually defeated by fall in one of their meetings).

NCAA Showstopper - Ian Miller, Kent State

These are the guys you can’t look away from when they take the mat — their big moves and risk-taking nature make them fan favorites regardless of team allegiance. Last year, Dylan Ness earned this award. This year, it goes to Ian Miller. 

We’ve been fortunate enough to watch Miller inside-trip, boot scoot, and lateral drop some of the best in the country for years. He pushed and challenged Martinez in ways we haven’t seen him challenged in that NCAA semifinal. Miller ended his collegiate career as a three-time All-American for Kent State. He has a promising future in Greco-Roman, should he choose to pursue it.  

For Ian, well-done is better than well-said, so just watch a few of his unreal moments below:

Coach Of The Year - Pat Popolizio, North Carolina State

People may look at the end of North Carolina State’s season as some sort of proof that Coach Popolizio should not yet enter that elite tier of coaches. But for me, it helped proved my point.

In just four years, Popolizio transformed North Carolina State from the ACC’s doormat (check out their 2012-2013 stats here), to a budding monster. He didn't accomplish this with blue chip recruits or the inheritance of a talented roster. In fact, the culture was so bad at Raleigh when Coach Pop arrived, that only Tommy Gantt made it through the transition. He did it with belief in a system and an unwavering adherence to a set of standards. Apart from the Gwiazdowski transfer, this was a team that should not have been contending with, let alone beating, Iowa, Missouri or Oklahoma State in any sort of competitive sense.  

The Wolfpack have a big recruiting class coming in this year, but they obviously had no impact on the team this year. What North Carolina State had was a lot of under-the-radar guys come out and produce for the entire season. Guys like Max Rohskopf and Gantt weren’t supposed to be big-time national contenders, and Kevin Jack was a walk-on from Connecticut two years ago.

My point is this: North Carolina State over-performed for an entire season. Every week, someone stepped up in a big dual, or in a deciding match. Somehow, they avoided that down weekend that every team inevitably endures until the last one in March. Their NCAA showing proved just how much Coach Popolizio and company were getting out of their guys for an entire year. Could Jack, Gantt and Rohskopf have performed better? Absolutely. Is that on the coaching staff? Certainly they can take plenty of blame there. But you have to give tremendous credit to a team that went to Oklahoma State, Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri and won, then fought their way to an ACC championship over an incredible Virginia Tech team.  

Rebuilds are supposed to take time when you don’t have a bevy of talent on campus or a major recruiting class. So for Coach Popolizio to launch his team to the top two in dual rankings in this short amount of time is remarkable. Coach Dresser was an outstanding choice as well — he also inherited a dumpster fire and turned it into a national power — but Virginia Tech is a few years ahead of North Carolina State in resolving that problem.  

NCAA’s Most Improved - Dean Heil, Oklahoma State

Improvement is very difficult to measure. There were a number of strong contenders for this award: Brett Pfarr, Alec Pantaleo, Steven Rodrigues and Jared Haught all came to mind as guys who made serious jumps, but Heil's path really stood out. His fourth-place finish last year doesn't reflect the reality of his situation, since he had a pretty rough freshman season. He was ranked quite low (or unranked) most of the year and earned a No. 14 seed at NCAAs. Last year, he fell to five non-aa’s, including Kade Moss and George Fisher. This was on the heels of a rough true freshman season where he fell to Nick Anderson, Andrew Atkinson and Brendan Murphy.  

That sets a pretty good measure for where Heil was two years in at Oklahoma State. He was solid, and came on hot at the end to beat Lavion Mayes, Kevin Jack, Geo Martinez and Anthony Ashnault while falling to just Chris Mecate and Devin Carter. At this point, we were certainly alerted to Heil's potential. He excelled this year despite Oklahoma State's extremely competitive schedule, and fell to only Joey Ward. Heil went undefeated until that late February bout against UNC, and did not lose again. Given Heil’s history, you'd expect he could win the title, but you’d also anticipate him dropping more matches, especially against the level of competition he faced. Heil knocked off All-Americans Kevin Jack, Joey McKenna (twice), Jimmy Gulibon, Randy Cruz, Joey Ward, Anthony Ashnault and Bryce Meredith (twice). He didn't stop there — he also beat a number of ranked opponents, including No. 5 seed Matt Manley, Tommy Thorn (twice), Seth Gross (twice), Mike Racciato and Javier Gasca. That’s 15 tough wins. For him to navigate this schedule with only one loss is an incredible testament to his improvement. Don’t just look at NCAA placement as a metric — there’s more to the story and Dean Heil that prove that point in spades.