Wrestling team sends wrestlers for all 10 weight classes to NCAAs
No. 14 CMU achieved something never accomplished in school or Mid-American Conference history in sending a wrestler from all 10 weight classes this weekend to the NCAA Championships.
The Chippewas are one of four programs to have 10 qualifiers, along with Iowa, Iowa State and Oklahoma.
“We accomplished three of our goals so far,” said CMU coach Tom Borrelli. “Winning the Mid-American Conference regular season, winning the tournament and qualifying all 10 guys to nationals. We have a lot of high expectations on us this season, and I don’t exactly know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.”
Eight CMU wrestlers qualified with automatic bids from the Mid-American Conference tournament, including five tournament champions. Senior 149-pounder Tony D’Alie and sophomore heavyweight Jarod Trice were awarded at-large bids because of their regular season performances.
The at-large bids given to the MAC bring the total to 27 qualifiers in the conference, fifth-most of the 11 conferences.
“All of us are going to be national champions at the end of this week,” Trice said. “That is our mindset. We have wrestled tough all year and we can compete with anybody.”
Of the ten qualifiers, five are seeded in the top 12. The highest seeds were given to Trice and freshman 174-pounder Ben Bennett with a No. 7 seed.
Senior 125-pounder Matt Steintrager (8), senior 157-pounder Steve Brown (12) and sophomore 133-pounder Scotti Sentes (11) also head into the tournament with a top-12 seed.
“The team has been given pretty low seeds and, if we wrestle just to our seeding, then we may only finish in the top 15,” Borrelli said. “However, the team should see a lot of over-achievers in the tournament.”
2009 finish
CMU had eight qualifiers to the national tournament last season but, with only two wrestlers finishing as All-Americans, the team took 14th place overall.
With the low seeds for the individual wrestlers, Central heads into the tournament with the same No. 14 seed it finished with last year.
The magic number for the Chippewas could be five. No team with five All-Americans finished lower than seventh in the national tournament last season. Iowa won the national title with five All-Americans and no individual national champions.
“The brackets are out, and now we have been working with scouting reports and trying to maintain our weight,” Borrelli said. “We are all pretty healthy, and we will have some overachievers at nationals.”
