Back from Outside the Top 20: These 8 Teams are Positioned for a Top 20 Finish in Cleveland

With the World Championships behind us, we’re almost solely focused on the upcoming collegiate season. To kick off our collegiate coverage, we’re going to focus on some teams to watch for the 2025-26 season.

All of these teams finished outside the top 20 at the 2025 NCAA Championships for various reasons. Some had bad luck with injuries. Some had young teams. Others might have underperformed.

Whatever the reason, 2025-26 is a new year. In the current climate of collegiate athletics, it’s much easier to remake a roster in an offseason than ever before. Many teams below took advantage of that. High school wrestlers are also more prepared than ever to win at the collegiate level, so teams might be more apt to depend on positive results from freshmen today, compared to the past.

We’ve identified eight teams that are in position to return to the top 20 in 2025-26 and given some reasons why there is optimism about such an improvement this season.

Iowa State

The Cyclones are the poster team for this feature. They came in at #3 in our first preseason team rankings and in the dual rankings. 2024-25 was kind of an aberration and almost a worst-case scenario for Kevin Dresser’s team. Their potential national champion heavyweight (Yonger Bastida) only participated in two duals before being lost for the year due to injuries. A likely high All-American (Anthony Echemendia) was lost for the year after the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational. Their best 125 lb option missed the bulk of the regular season and wasn’t able to qualify for nationals. In Philly, their All-American 133 lber lost a pair of matches to eventual top-six finishers.

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