The ACC wrestling championship is going on today. We are currently in first in the team standings with 7 wrestlers in the finals and locked to go to the NCAA championships. 3 wrestlers still alive in the consis, Gustaffison has a had a good chance to grab 3rd and make it to the NCAA's.
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Gustaffason only wrestler to make it to consi-finals.
Gustaffason takes third after dominating UVA's Will Mason. May receive an at large bid for the NCAA's but probably not.
YES!
Finals start at 7 ESPN3 if you can get it. At least it will all be on one mat. It was very frustrating today with 2 different feeds. Walz and Epperly were huge. Beasts. What about Dance. NCSU choked a couple in the semis allowing us to widen our lead.
LOLUVA flop of the day. Shanney of UVA is down 5-6 to NCSU #1 seed with about 40 seconds left and they are up and neutral. Shanney takes a shot but gets caught with his shoulders high and pinned in the last 10 seconds. 6 for the bad guys!
On my high school team, we always said guys either have the heart of a lion or the heart of a salamander. You can guess which one I think of said UVA wrestler at this point.
Winner winner chicken dinner
Congrats to the team they looked really good overall out there and 6 champions is a great accomplishment. Other than Sal, who I really thought was stuck during that first scramble situation, I thought they all looked really great with maybe the exception of Haught who coasted and seemed winded. Really thought Ty looked great and was really glad Epperly pulled through as Ramos is a tough competitor. I hope the two week break allows the guys to focus in and make another strong run and maybe even compete for an individual title at a weight class or two.
I watched most of the action today and it was a pretty dominating performance. I was hoping that Sal could pull it out but 6 champs is very impressive. I hope Gus can get an at large bid for the NCAAs.
I really would like to see us get a guy or 2 into the finals and hopefully win one. Walz is on another level right now but it will be tough at heavyweight. Hopefully he can get the 2 or 3 seed to avoid Kyle Snyder.
Me and my best buddy were there and the Hokies were in the the house! great atmosphere! great wrestlin... 6 champs and 93 total team points! I'm thinking that could be close to an ACC championship points record... i'm looking in to it..
Many Lets Go Hokies! Heard!
First time since the 2012 Hokies that a team has won the ACC duel title and the ACC tourney.
A quick copy and past of the finals.
Team Scores
1. Virginia Tech, 93.0
2. NC State, 64.0
3. Pitt, 54.0
4. Virginia, 52.5
5. North Carolina, 44.0
6. Duke, 24.5
Most Valuable Wrestler—Kevin Jack, NC State
Individual Results—Championship Finals
125—Joey Dance (VT) d. Sean Fausz (NCS), 3-1, SV-1
133—Dom Forys (UP) d. Jamal Morris, 5-0
141—Kevin Jack (NCS) d. George DiCamillo (UVA), 10-4
149—Solomon Chishko (VT) d. Troy Heilmann (UNC), 12-7
157—Taleb Rahmani (UP) major decision Sal Mastriani (VT), 13-5
165—Te'Shan Campbell (UP) d. Brian Hamann (NCS), 7-0
174—Zach Epperly (VT) d. Ethan Ramos (UNC), 4-3
184—Zack Zavatsky (VT) d. Michael Macchiavello (NCS), 3-2
197—Jared Haught (VT) d. Daniel Chaid (UNC), 6-3
285—Ty Walz (VT) d. Jacob Kasper (DU), 8-3
Maybe we can get a couple of at large bids to help bolster our chances in the NCAAs. This is a good article telling of where the team's head was. Very confident. Check out what Dance had to say.
ACC Wrestling Tournament
If you have never seen the NCAAs on line. It is a blast but you have to keep up and move between the mats to see what you want.
Edit: NC State pretty much choked it in the semis; hence the big win. And.......
There will be no more than one at-large bid for the Hokies. We got seven auto-qualifiers, and of the 3 remaining classes, only Gustafson has any shot at an at-large bid. Last I checked, he was ranked somewhere around 30, which could be good enough if there weren't many higher-ranked wrestlers upset in their conference tourneys, but it seems like a long shot.
Did anyone else hear one of the announcers repeatedly say the Hokies finished 6th last year at the NCAAs? Whoever gave him his info sheet didn't do enough research. A 4th place finish is much more significant than 6th.
That was annoying, but they did get one beauty in. While Gustafson was wrestling Duke's Cole Baumgartner in the opening round, they said (paraphrasing here): Gustafson looks like he hasn't left the weight room since he arrived at VT, while Baumgartner looks like he hasn't found it yet. That gave me a good chuckle.
Great news! This team is rocking! Hopefully they put another NCAA trophy in the case!
ESPN announced today that they will be broadcasting every single round of the championship this year. Previously they only showed the semi-finals and finals.
http://espnmediazone.com/us/press-releases/2017/03/prime-time-ncaa-divis...
Awesome...I hope. Any idea if the sessions that will be on ESPNU will be available via streaming for those of us who don't have that channel? I'm a cord-cutter and my SlingTV subscription gets me access to streaming content that's on ESPN and ESPN2, but usually not ESPNU.
Doubtful, but you will only miss the first round because the VT guys will all make it to the championship round meaning each match will be on ESPN.
Do the Hokies have a chance at the NCAAs? It would be our first NCAA team championship in anything.
Highly unlikely, just too weak at a few weight classes. Goal is getting a team trophy (top 4).
Hard to say any team projected top 5 has no chance, but it would take a miracle. Dance has struggled in the NCAAs the last few years he needs to live up to that 2 or 3 seed he will likely have. Walz has probably the best wrestler in the country to contend with in Snyder. Haught and Zavatsky probably have the best chances. Haught wrestled the #1 seed j'den cox earlier this year and only lost 2-0 so that has to help with his confidence. It was his only loss this year.
I'm a bit more bullish on our chances, but it's still a relatively long shot. Penn State showed at the B1G tourney that they're not unbeatable. If a couple of their guys stumble, like Nickal did last weekend, or if Suriano's ankle doesn't heal up, the field is wide open. If Dance can stay healthy (wasn't it an injury, rather than poor performance that derailed him last year?) he's got a legit shot at standing atop the podium. As you mentioned, Haught wrestled Cox, whose only loss in the last two years was a DQ, awfully close earlier this season, so he's got a chance there. I seem to be in the extreme minority here, but I believe that Walz is one of the few heavyweights in the country with a realistic shot at dethroning Snyder too. He wrestled him close for two periods last year but ran out of gas in the third. He seems to have been preparing all year for a rematch, as his stamina and aggressiveness look much better than last year.
Dance hasn't lived up to his seed the last 2 years. I think there were rumblings about an injury last year, but nothing serious. His only all-American year was as a true freshmen. I just see a pretty big gap between PSU and OSU and the rest of the field. I think 3rd would be a tremendous feat for us but very attainable.
It was a bit of both... Dance was upset in the 2nd round and then got injured in his consolation matchup and lost again.
Which OSU? I mean Ohio state just beat PSU in the Big 10 tourney, given one of their wrestlers was too injured to go, but Oklahoma State is the new number 1 and have all of their guys making the trip and that helps tremendous I'm really seeing us as battling the Oranges for 4th again unless the guys really bring it and beat all expectations.
you're right I forgot about Oklahoma state and having someone in the top 10 in just about every class they definitely are in that top 3 mix. Only hesitation with them is they are super young, which may cause them so jitters at this level.
The other knock on the Cowboys is that their style doesn't lead to many bonus points. They wrestle very conservatively compared to the PSU's and Ohio States of the world. While they do have roster full of top ten guys, only three are ranked in the top 4 (using Intermat rankings). The others look like low-AA or non-AA competitors. I think they'll have a tough time competing for #1 unless some of the other powers trip up.
Haught actually lost to #2 Brett Pfarr by MD 14-1 this year, and lost to him twice last year.
Missed that. List I looked at must have just included dual meets.
Extremely unlikely.... but let's do the math.
We would need at least 100 points to be in the conversation. Last year we scored 82 and finish 4th. We have
67 wrestlers competing (Gus has a small chance of getting an at large to make78).A national championship scores a minimum of 21 points (16 + 1 pt per advancement round).
We would need at least 3 guys to make it to the finals and 2 to likely win which is something we have never had before. Haught, ZZ, Walz, Epperly and Dance all have a shot of making it to the finals and Epperly and Dance probably have the best chance of winning.
So, lets just say we put 3 guys in the finals and have 2 individual champs:
42 points from 2 champs
16 points from 1 runner-up
40.5 points from 3 3rd place finishes
10 points for 1 5th place finish
=108.5 points
This is not including any type of bonus points from TF, MD or pins. Last year Epperly picked up a ton of bonus points in the consolation rounds.
I think we really are 1 guy short from truly having a legitimate shot. The scenario above is not completely unrealistic but it would take our guys really having an incredible day or 2 in the championship rounds.
My math might be off a bit so please correct me if I am wrong. I got the scoring numbers here
Minor correction. We have 7 qualifiers and a (small) possiblity of Gus making it 8. I think you're forgetting either Mastriani or Chishko.
You are correct, my numbers are accounting for 7 guys scoring, I just missed it up top. Best scenario is Gus get an atlarge and can help pick up another team point or 2. Now is where redshirting McFadden really hurts us... he could have gotten us another 12+ points.
The field has been announced and sadly (but not surprisingly) Gus did not make the list. We're going to have 7 wrestlers in St. Louis and will have to make do with those guys. Fortunately, 6 of the 7 should be pretty highly seeded when the seeds are announced tomorrow.
Slight chance, but highly improbable, I would just like an individual champ and would be more than happy if that happened and we had 6 AAs total which should be about what the seeding is probably going to be predicting. Really hoping that we could have multiple finals appearances. With that said a lot has to do with match ups as people have mentioned above Dance has disappointed when he gets matched up with guys who are great at scrambling, usually taller and lankier than him, and have a great shot. I'm really hoping he has a good showing as he's always been one of our best besides when it comes to the NCAA tourney. I think Epperly probably has the best shot, especially with how he showed last year after that opening loss. He did an almost unthinkable task of running the table in the consolations and thus having to wrestle so many more matches than the other guys. Haught and Waltz are great wrestlers who have Olympic medal opponents in their brackets so I don't really feel too good about those guys chances even with Haught looking good against Cox earlier this year since he didn't score a point. ZZ and Chisko could surprise you really never know.
Walz should have 4 years football eligibility left!