(Thanks go out to Notre Dame fencing representative Dave Stabrawa for passing along the bout sequence/results from Saturday's ND-PSU men's matchup, won by the Irish 14-13; the bout sequence was a tremendous help in reconstructing the match, for this blog entry.)
Notre Dame senior epeeist Karol Kostka was the only fencer (from either team) to go 3-0 in Saturday's #1 battle between the Penn State and Notre Dame men. Four other Irish fencers – epeeist Brent Kelly, foilists Gerek Meinhardt and Mark Kubik, and sabreist Bill Thanhouser – each went 2-1 in that tense matchup, as did four of the Nittany Lions fencers (foil standouts Nick Chinman and Miles Chamley-Watson, along with the sabre duo of Bobby Thompson and Wolfgang Rafert).
Penn State actually finished with a 5-4 edge over ND in foil and sabre, but Kostka and Kelly paced the decisive 6-3 Irish margin in epee. The Nittany Lions were hurt by the absence of All-American Daniel Bak, who placed third in the 2008 NCAA men's sabre competition (Chinman and Chamley-Watson both missed last week's Princeton Multi-Meet, where the PSU men suffered their first loss of the season to the University of Pennsylvania).
Meinhardt – some five months removed from becoming the youngest U.S. fencer ever to compete in the Olympic Games – jumped right into the tense ND-PSU showdown, a fitting highlight of his first taste of collegiate team fencing (he did not compete last week, due to a World Cup conflict). Meinhardt registered an early 5-2 win over Chinman (the 4th-place NCAA finisher in '08; also 5th in '07), but PSU answered moments later on the sabre strip when Aleksander Ochocki beat All-America veteran Thanhouser, 5-2.
Throughout the first half of the PSU-ND men's match, neither team enjoyed a lead of more than two points (PSU was ahead 4-2 and 5-3; ND later went up 8-6). Other key results in those first 14 bouts included: PSU epeeist James Moody defeating fellow NCAA Tournament veteran Brent Kelly (5-2); ND's Kubik topping the freshman phenom Chamley-Watson (5-3); Rafert's 5-2 victory over sabre All-American Barron Nydam; and Meinhardt's 5-1 bout with All-American Samuel Perkins, giving the Irish their 8-6 lead.
Kostka's 5-0 shutout of Moody pushed ND's margin to 10-6, but the Lions roared back to tie the score with four straight wins (most notably in that stretch, Thompson beat Nydam, 5-1). The seven bouts remaining at that point included four in foil and three on the epee strip.
PSU claimed an 11-10 lead with its fifth straight win (Chamley-Watson's 5-2 bout with fellow freshman Enzo Castellani), but Kostka then beat Maxwell Dettinger (5-2) and Kubik delivered a huge shutout win over Perkins, swinging the lead back to the Irish (12-11). Kelly followed with a 5-1 victory over Brian Helfich – giving ND three shots at the clinching win – but Chamley-Watson edged Meinhardt (5-4), in a matchup of elite newcomers.
Notre Dame then made a calculated gamble by inserting sophomore Jacob Osborne into the final epee bout (vs. Moody), pitting a youngster with limited collegiate team fencing experience (he did not fence for ND in '08) against a two-time NCAA Tournament entrant. Moody stretched to a 4-3 lead and was one touch away from forcing a 13-13 tie, but Osborne won the final two points to clinch the team victory (14-12).
(note that bout details for the OSU men's win over PSU are not available at this time, but will be posted on Sunday.)