Indiana native Brennan Cosgrove tops the list, finishing the 2008 season as the No. 7 wrestler in the country at 145 pounds, and will likely bump up to 149 pounds for Purdue. He was a state champ in Indiana and one of two future Boilermaker's to earn All-American honors, taking sixth place at Senior Nationals.
Ethan Smith is the other high school All-American to come to West Lafayette after taking fourth place at Senior Nationals. Smith hails from Wasatch High School in Utah, the same alma mater as 2006 NCAA Qualifier Colton Salazar and Olympic Gold Medalist and four-time NCAA Champion Cael Sanderson. Smith finished the 2008 season at No. 13 in the nation at 160 pounds.
Rounding out the list of nationally ranked grapplers is Kegan Handlovic, who came out of 2008 ranked No. 14 in the country at 119 pounds. A product of national power Easton High School in Pennsylvania, Handlovic won back-to-back state titles in 2007 and 2008, and will give the Boilermakers ample help at 125 pounds.
Matt Bryan joins the Old Gold and Black at 141 pounds, coming to West Lafayette from Broken Arrow, Okla., while Ryan Gambill closes out the group of newcomers, hailing from Casstown, Ohio. Bryan Gambill, Handlovic, Smith and Cosgrove combined to win 10 state titles in their high school tenure.
Purdue head coach Scott Hinkel picked up a few transfers this offseason, highlighted by Carson Beebe, Orrin Kleinhenz and Juan Archuleta. Beebe, the younger brother of former Boilermaker Chase Beebe, comes to Purdue from highly-ranked Central Michigan, and will wrestle at 133 pounds, while Kleinhenz switches to Old Gold and Black from Columbia blue, and will wrestle at 184 or 197 pounds. Archuleta won the 2008 California Junior College Championship at 141 pounds for Sacramento City College.
The Boilermakers are one of eight Big Ten teams to earn national top-20 honors on the recruiting front, including the top-ranked class of the University of Minnesota. This marks Purdue's best-ranked recruiting class since the 2003 season, when the Boilermakers earned top-15 marks from several publications.
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