It’s the 2019 NCAA Division 1 Wrestling Tournament.
The men’s D-1 basketball brackets are out and many people, whether it be at the office, school, or wherever, are busy picking winners. When money is involved, pooled money typically doesn’t amount to much, but at least winners have bragging rights.
Speaking of schools, my last ten years of work were spent in an all-girls’ school dedicated to women’s development. In all of my years there, every bracket pool was for men’s college basketball only. It seemed that the women’s bracket wasn’t good or exciting enough to qualify.
But there’s yet another bracket this time of year–even lesser known to the public than women’s basketball. It’s the NCAA Division 1 Wrestling Tournament, which starts on Thursday in Pittsburgh, PA.
College wrestling has ten weight classes and each class has 32 wrestlers who’ve qualified by their record. Just as in other sports, some choices of winners are easy to pick and others are quite difficult to score. Talent is the reason.
OSU’s Daton Fix (photo, InterMat Wrestling)
And talent abounds in the 133-weight class. It’s being declared as the deepest weight class of all time.
No wrestler in it is unbeaten. The top seed, Daton Fix, is 30-1. Fix won a Junior World Championship in freestyle wrestling before entering Oklahoma State as a true freshman. His opponents include two finalists from last year–Michigan’s Stevan Micic and Nick Suriano of Rutgers.
As if those three weren’t enough, there are four other highly-rated competitors: Micky Phillippi of Pittsburgh, who gave Fix his only loss; All-America Luke Pletcher of Ohio State; two-time All-America Ethan Lizak of Minnesota, who was an NCAA finalist in 2017; and #12-seed, Montorie Bridges of Wyoming, who earned 2nd place in the Big 12 tournament two weeks ago. He was All-America in 2018.
I still have a few more hours to pick the winners for each weight class, but I’ll put off choosing the winner at 133. They’re all so very good.
May the best man–of all these good men–win!
