Our weekly NC State Wolfpack wrestling notebook is below:

No. 4 NC State wrestling took care of business Sunday, shutting out Gardner-Webb by a final score of 42-0. It marked the Wolfpack’s 18th straight dual victory, which is the longest active streak in the country.

The Wolfpack tallied bonus points in seven of the 10 bouts. Some other notes, nuggets and thoughts:

STAT OF THE WEEK: It’s important to note NC State wrestled 16 extra matches. Because the COVID-19 pandemic has canceled open tournaments — traditionally where backups and redshirts compete to gain experience — teams will wrestle extra matches, sometimes at the same time as the dual, or sometimes the day after, such as this weekend versus App State.

NCSU went 24-2 overall Sunday, including some Wolfpack backups beating Gardner-Webb starters, but even that doesn’t begin to truly tell how dominant NC State was.

In the dual, the Pack posted an aggregate scoring advantage of 107-33. If points scored before a pin counted, it increases to 133-34. NC State allowed just one takedown, and all of the other points allowed were escapes. Of those 32 escapes given up, 21 of them were unofficially “cuts,” where the Wolfpacker allowed his opponent up in order to attempt scoring another takedown.

MOMENT OF THE MATCH: There were two Wolfpack debuts in the bout, including an overtime win from freshman Donald Cates over RJ Mosley, who is Gardner-Webb’s best wrestler and won 20-plus matches last year, at 165.

However, it was classmate and 149-pounder Ed Scott who caught this observer’s eye the most. Though the blue-chip recruit was the most anticipated wrestler to watch going in, just to see what the buzz was about, he showed explosion, strength and a penchant for big moves before securing the pin. He bullied his opponent around, was incredibly dominant and it’s hard to imagine a better start to a college career.

His pin is the first one in the tweet below:

We sang the praises of NC State’s two freshmen starters above, so in an effort to not repeat ourselves, we’ll give a nod to 184-pound junior Jacob Ferreira. The former Bucknell transfer started as a true freshman at 184 at his previous school, then dropped to 174 upon his arrival in Raleigh last year.

The weight was simply not a good fit for him. Though he won the NCSU wrestleoff, he went just 2-3 at the weight and couldn’t stay down there. He looks much more comfortable at 184, where he stepped into the starting lineup for star redshirt sophomore Trent Hidlay, who is still recovering from an emergency appendectomy.

Hidlay will return to the lineup once healthy — he’s a consensus top-five wrestler at his weight nationally — but Ferreira is proving to be a valuable depth guy right now.

TV: ACC Network Extra

What To Watch For: 149-pound freshman Ed Scott vs. No. 10 Jonathan Millner

The tests are about to get much tougher for Scott, and he may see his second-best opponent of the regular season Friday night (behind UNC's Austin O’Connor, who is ranked No. 1 in most national polls).

Millner is a legitimate All-America candidate. The redshirt junior is a savvy veteran that has won 20-plus matches each of the last two years and earned the No. 18 seed for the canceled 2020 NCAA Championships after he went 31-4.

No 149-pounder in the land posted more major-decision victories last year than Millner’s 10, which ranked eighth nationally regardless of weight, so he’s capable of putting up points. He’s also 7-0 in his career versus Wolfpack wrestlers.

This is the type of win that can quickly push Scott into the national rankings.

Four of Scott's five league foes appear in the top 20 of at least one set of national rankings — welcome to college wrestling in the small (six teams) but difficult ACC.

• On the most recent episode of the #PackMentality Pop-Ins Podcast, head coach Pat Popolizio said he expects 165-pound fifth-year senior Thomas Bullard, who is ranked in the top 10 nationally by all seven major media outlets, to make his season debut Friday night.

• Up a weight at 174, twin Daniel Bullard — like many NC State wrestlers — will see a familiar foe against App State: fifth-year senior Thomas Flitz, who he has wrestled five times in his college career, including three times last year. Bullard won two of those three, and four of the five overall, but all three bouts last year were within three points.

• Another repeat matchup from last year will be junior heavyweight Deonte Wilson taking on the Mountaineers' Michael Burchell, who pinned Wilson in the second period at the Wolfpack Open last November. However, Wilson was a completely different wrestler in the second half of last season, so it will be interesting to see how this rematch goes.

Last week, we unveiled our first edition of the consensus ACC national rankings for the league’s wrestlers according to four major outlets (update available at the bottom of this story).

We take it a step further this week for a peak at what the team race at the ACC Championships would look like if the consensus average national ranking for each grappler in the ACC held (which is highly unlikely, but still a good exercise to see how the teams stack up in a tournament situation).

Note if a weight did not have four wrestlers appear at the weight (this happened only at 125), an educated guess was used to fill out the top four. If there was a tie, the wrestler with the highest single ranking from one of the four surveyed polls was given the higher placement.

It’s also worth nothing that while some schools appear twice at a weight below, that’s due to outlets having different wrestlers ranked … however, each program can only enter one grappler at ACCs.

Here's how the raw team scores (placement and advancement points) would work out, with the top four at each weight below that … bonus points could (and usually do) make the team race much tighter:

1. NC State - 74.5 team points

2. Virginia Tech - 66.5

3. North Carolina - 62

4. Virginia - 40.5

5. Pittsburgh - 39

6. Duke - 17.5

——

• Talk about it inside The Wolves' Den

• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes

• Learn more about our print and digital publication, The Wolfpacker

• Follow us on Twitter: @TheWolfpacker

• Like us on Facebook