Junior Bryce Meredith placed the highest for the Cowboys at the Big XII tournament, coming in second place at 141 pounds, as the UW wrestling team took fifth place overall in the tournament.
Meredith is the second finalist for UW in the two years it has been a member of the Big XII.
Drew Templeman, Cole Mendenhall and Branson Ashworth all joined Meredith with automatic bids to the NCAA Wrestling Championship in St. Louis on March 16-18. Archie Colgan also punched his ticket by getting a at-large bid into the tournament.
“It was definitely nice to see a few of our guys place this weekend,” head coach Mark Branch said. “I thought a couple of our guys came out a little conservative this morning, but were able to turn it up a notch when they needed to. Next stop is the NCAA tournament and we all look forward to that.”
Meredith fell in the championship match to no. 1 ranked Dean Heil of Oklahoma State by a score of 10-7. This was Meredith’s second time wrestling Heil this year, both of them being close matches but ending up in Heil’s favor.
“Bryce (Meredith) has seen Dean (Heil) a few times now and each time I think it gets to be a better match,” Branch said. “We have talked with him protecting his legs, but we knew it would be a tough one. I think he did some good things during the match and I hope these two get a rematch, depending on how the seeding works out.”
Templeman won a 4-3 decision over Christian Moody in the third place match to clinch his second straight trip to Nationals.
Mendenhall also placed third by defeating Alex Kocer of South Dakota State via pin-fall, while Branson Ashworth placed fifth by defeated Andrew Fogarty of North Dakota State. Both clinched their first ever trips to the NCAAs..
Junior Archie Colgan placed fifth at 157 by scoring a tech fall over Colton DiBlasi of Iowa State, while classmate Kyle Pope also took fifth at 174. Colgan earned an at-large big into the tournament, but Pope wasn’t able to get that at-large bid.
Senior Brandon Tribble fought hard to reach the consolation semis but fell to Ben Tynan of NDSU 6-1. Tribble finished his UW career by falling in the fifth place match to Quean Smith of Iowa State.
After all of the conference tournaments have concluded, the NCAA Division I Wrestling Committee will meet in person to select the remaining at-large qualifiers, which will be announced on March 8 at 4 p.m. All weight classes for the event starting March 16 will consist of 33 wrestlers. The NCAA tournament will be from March 16-18 in St. Louis, Missouri at the Scottrade Center.
