Oklahoma State wrestler Daton Fix is positioned to lastly win an elusive nationwide championship, and Penn State is poised to win the workforce title once more with two potential 4-time champions.
Fix has positioned within the high 4 on the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships 4 instances, together with three second-place finishes. He got here again this season to make use of the additional 12 months the NCAA supplied due to the COVID-19 pandemic and gained a file fifth Big 12 title. Now, he has earned the No. 1 seed within the 133-pound class on the NCAA event.
He desires to profit from his final likelihood at a nationwide title. The championships will run Thursday by way of Saturday on the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City.
“Obviously, I’ve been in position to win plenty of times, and I just haven’t got the job done,” Fix stated. “So I know how to get there and I know what I need to do to to reach that next step on the podium. I’ve got to score some more points. And it’s something that I know that I can do. And it’s just a matter of getting back to that moment and doing it.”
Fix missed a number of matches with damage and sickness this season for the primary time in his school profession. Oklahoma State coach John Smith stated Fix has dealt with the challenges nicely.
“When you don’t have something for a period of time that, your identity is that, you realize just fortunate, how important it is to you,” Smith stated. “So I think it helped him raise this level of hunger for a championship.”
It gained’t be a simple path. Last 12 months’s champion at 133, Cornell’s Vito Arujau, is again. Arujau beat Fix in final 12 months’s semifinals. Lehigh freshman Ryan Crookham is undefeated, seeded No. 2 and has two wins over Arujau this season.
In the workforce race, two-time defending nationwide champion Penn State is once more the favourite below coach Cael Sanderson. All 10 Nittany Lions wrestlers are seeded within the high 10 and 6 within the high two. They search their eleventh nationwide title up to now 13 years.
Penn State’s Aaron Brooks and Carter Starocci are in search of their fourth championships.
Brooks is the No. 1 seed at 197. North Carolina State’s unbeaten Trent Hidlay may derail him. Last 12 months’s runner-up in that class, South Dakota State’s Tanner Sloan, is also again.
Starocci is seeded simply ninth at 174, partly due to a medical forfeit on the Big Ten Championships. He may have a troublesome highway. He is one in all three former nationwide champs competing at 174. Mekhi Lewis, the 2019 champ at 165 and the No. 1 seed, and Michigan’s Shane Griffith, the 2021 champ at 165 whereas at Stanford, are there as nicely.
There’s extra for Penn State. Greg Kerkvliet is the No. 1 seed at 285 after being nationwide runner-up final 12 months, although he may very well be challenged. Kerkvliet defeated Air Force’s Wyatt Hendrickson within the semifinals final 12 months, and Hendrickson has put collectively one other robust season.
Levi Haines, a runner-up final 12 months at 157, and Braeden Davis, a real freshman at 125, are also No. 1 seeds for Penn State.
In the latest NWCA Coaches Poll, Penn State was No. 1, Iowa No. 2, Nebraska No. 3 and Oklahoma State No. 4.
Here are some issues to look at at this 12 months’s nationwide championships:
The high three seeds at 141 are from the Big Ten. Ohio State’s Jesse Mendez beat Penn State’s Beau Bartlett within the Big Ten last after beating final 12 months’s nationwide runner-up, Iowa’s Real Woods, within the semifinals. Mendez is seeded first, Bartlett second and Woods third in Kansas City.
Purdue’s Matt Ramos may win all of it at 125. He shocked Iowa’s three-time nationwide champion, Spencer Lee, in final 12 months’s semifinals and completed second. He is seeded fourth. It’s a troublesome subject. Penn State’s Davis is seeded No. 1, Lehigh’s Luke Stanich is No. 2 and Iowa’s Drake Ayala is seeded third.
Missouri’s Keegan O’Toole, final 12 months’s champion within the 165 class, is the highest seed. He may run into Iowa State’s David Carr, a 4-time Big 12 champion who gained a nationwide title at 157 in 2021. O’Toole has a win over Carr this season.
The Penn State prepare gained’t be stopping anytime quickly. Davis, a real freshman, is coming off a Big Ten title. True freshman Tyler Kasak is the No. 7 seed at 149. Redshirt freshman Mitchell Mesenbrink is No. 2 at 165.
Northern Iowa’s Parker Keckeisen has three high-three finishes, however hasn’t gained a nationwide title. He has been unstoppable this season in rolling to a 23-0 file. He has adopted up final 12 months’s runner-up season at 184 with an undefeated run and a No. 1 seed in the identical class. Penn State’s Brooks, who beat Keckeisen within the 184 last final season, has moved as much as 197.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is printed from a syndicated information company feed – Associated Press)
