Virginia Tech wrestling is sending eight wrestlers (out of ten weight classes) to the NCAA Wrestling Championships, which will get underway Thursday, March 18 at 11 AM.
This is the seventh time in the last eight NCAA’s that the Hokies have sent eight wrestlers. The qualifying Hokie wrestlers (and their overall seeds, among 33 wrestlers in each weight class) are:
- 125 pounds: r-Fr. Sam Latona (2 seed)
- 133: GS Korbin Myers (3)
- 149: So. Bryce Andonian (6)
- 157: r-Fr. Connor Brady (28)
- 165: r-So. Mekhi Lewis (4)
- 174: r-So. Dakota Howard (27)
- 184: r-Jr. Hunter Bolen (5)
- 285: Fr. Hunter Catka (18)
The full NCAA brackets, showing all 330 wrestlers in all weight classes, can be found here.
NCAA Wrestling Championships Projection
Scenarios have been run showing team scores if all wrestlers wrestled to seed, with no bonus points involved. Clearly this scenario won’t occur, but if it did, the top ten places, according to a fan compilation on BlueWhiteIllustrated.com, would be:
- Iowa 126.5
- Penn State 72
- NC State 63.5
- Virginia Tech 61.5
- Missouri 60
- Nebraska 54.5
- Michigan 53.5
- Oklahoma State 50
- Arizona State 46.5
- Ohio State 36
The key for Virginia Tech, as it is for all programs, is to (1) wrestle according to seed or better; (2) compile bonus points when possible, especially in early mismatches; and (3) avoid giving up bonus points. If Virginia Tech can do those things better than the other schools around them, the Hokies have a chance to match or beat their program-best fourth-place finish in 2016.
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With Iowa being the heavy favorite, all other programs appear to be wrestling for second place, and the Hokies have a legitimate shot of reaching that level, if things break their way. In a large event such as this, however, things tend to level out across so many wrestlers and so many weight classes.
How to Watch
With 330 wrestlers competing in ten weight classes across three days of competition, the NCAA Wrestling Championships are a logistical challenge, and for the fans, following the event can be challenging as well. Here’s the broadcast schedule for the ESPN family of channels:
However, that broadcast schedule doesn’t nearly represent all the action. Only the National Championships on Saturday night will be broadcast in their entirety. Eight mats will be used throughout the tournament before cutting down to four mats for the medal round and one mat for the finals, so in order to see all the action on all the mats, earlier rounds will be streamed.
Fortunately, each mat is streamed individually throughout the event, so no matter where Virginia Tech wrestlers are wrestling, you can watch them.
Tip: Follow @HokiesWrestling on Twitter, and they will let you know what Virginia Tech wrestlers are coming up, when, and on what mats.
In this article on NavySports.com, the Naval Academy compiled a full set of links for all the action that will be streamed. Each link goes to a WatchESPN page for each mat.
ESPN3 / WatchESPN Links
Thursday
Session 1A – 11:00 am (ET)
Mat 1 | Mat 2 | Mat 3 | Mat 4 | Mat 5 | Mat 6 | Mat 7 | Mat 8
Session 1B – 2:00 pm
Mat 1 | Mat 2 | Mat 3 | Mat 4 | Mat 5 | Mat 6 | Mat 7 | Mat 8
Session 2A – 6:00 pm
Mat 1 | Mat 2 | Mat 3 | Mat 4 | Mat 5 | Mat 6 | Mat 7 | Mat 8
Session 2B – 9:00 pm
Mat 1 | Mat 2 | Mat 3 | Mat 4 | Mat 5 | Mat 6 | Mat 7 | Mat 8
Friday
Session 3 – 11:00 am
Mat 1 | Mat 2 | Mat 3 | Mat 4 | Mat 5 | Mat 6 | Mat 7 | Mat 8
Session 4 – 3:00 pm
Mat 1 | Mat 2 | Mat 3 | Mat 4 | Mat 5 | Mat 6 | Mat 7 | Mat 8
Session 5 – 8:00 pm
Mat 1 | Mat 2 | Mat 3 | Mat 4 | Mat 5 | Mat 6 | Mat 7 | Mat 8
Saturday
Session 6 – 11:00 am
Mat 1 | Mat 2 | Mat 3 | Mat 4
Session 7 – 7:00 pm
Television Only, ESPN
Other Resources
- For the hokiesports.com preview, click here.
- For all other information relating to the NCAA Wrestling Championships, see this link on NCAA.com.
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Thanks for the thorough details on how to watch the matches – I plan to watch many of them. Brings back memories of my days as a high school wrestler. I was in the best shape of my life my senior year in high school. Wrestling is an awesome sport!
A wonderful informative article. Thanks for the update and insight on how to watch the matches.
HOw would you project each wrestler to do as part of the preview?
My 2 cents:
-Latona, Myers, and Bolen to be All-Americans (top 8 finish). Myers and Bolen have an outside chance at national champion.
-Lewis is unknown because of injury. He would be an obvious national champion contender if fully healthy. Maybe he can achieve All-American at less than 100% but there is a risk of reinjury and forfeit out as well.
-Andonian is a bit of a wild card as he wrestles a high risk, high reward style. Expect him to win multiple matches but also he has the highest variability in possible results (notwithstanding Lewis’s injury status).
-Brady or Howard winning a match would be great.
-Catka is probably expected to win at least one match and has the potential to make noise in the consolation bracket, but 0-2 isn’t impossible either.
Really, really good article for some of us novices. On my calendar. Many thanks.
TrackWrestling.com will have the full mat schedule as it’s released. Typically they’ll list 3-5 matches ahead of what’s actually being wrestled live, so you can figure out where all the Hokies are going to be without having to constantly bounce around your WatchESPN links.
For example, Sam Latona will be the 3rd match on Mat 4 in the first round.
https://www.trackwrestling.com/tw/predefinedtournaments/VerifyPassword.jsp?tournamentId=602346132
Theirs is not the most intuitive site to navigate sometimes, but all the information will be there
Flo doesn’t have mat assignments yet, but it will. I think the interface is a lot better than trackwrestling too. Trackwrestling is only slightly better than the sketchy streaming sites on reddit.
https://arena.flowrestling.org/event/2b7402ca-ba86-4e12-89ce-e78435e4411e
That is awesome with all mats available to watch. Just have to keep up with which VT guys are up on which mat.
Great article and info for viewing! Thanks!