March 15, 2006
Oklahoma City, Okla. - The No. 9 Tigers practiced in the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, Okla., today, preparing for tomorrow's NCAA Championships. Head Coach Brian Smith leads seven grapplers into the tournament, tying the standard for the most competitors a Missouri team has ever entered at Nationals (2003).
Junior Ben Askren (Hartland, Wis.), an NCAA runner-up each of the past two years, enters the 174-pound bracket as the No. 1 seed after being the only wrestler in the country to retain the No. 1 ranking throughout the season. The holder of a 40-0 record, Askren posted 25 falls and seven technical falls on the season, and opens the first round with a matchup against Christian Arellano of Cal-State Bakersfield, who is 22-9 on the season.
Returning All-American Matt Pell (Luxemburg, Wis.) will open the tournament as the No. 5 seed at 165 pounds, facing Joey Bracamonte of Oregon (22-3). Last season Pell entered the 2005 NCAA Championships unseeded and wrestled to a seventh-place finish, securing All-America status. Pell is 30-4 on the season.
The other Missouri wrestler to receive a seed at No. 9, redshirt freshman Raymond Jordan (New Bern, N.C) opens his first trip to Nationals against returning All-American Paul Bradley of Iowa. The pair faced each other Jan. 14, with Jordan upsetting then-No. 2 Bradley on a takedown with less than 20 seconds left in the bout, 5-4.
Senior 125-pounder Austin DeVoe (Columbus, Kan.) begins his first trip to the NCAA Championships as the very first match of the tournament, squaring off against Eric Stevenson of Oregon State in the pigtail round. A victory places DeVoe in a matchup against fifth-seed Troy Nickerson of Cornell, against whom DeVoe was defeated Dec. 30 at the Southern Scuffle.
The other Missouri grappler to finish second at the Big 12 Championships (Pell, Jordan), sophomore Tyler McCormick enters his first NCAA Championships with a 26-7 record on the season. McCormick drew unseeded Ryan Williams of Old Dominion in his first bout at 133 pounds.
After a strong late-season performance in which he compiled a 7-3 mark over his last 10 bouts, redshirt freshman Michael Chandler (High Ridge, Mo.) received a wild-card bid, and drew a first-round bye at 157 pounds. Chandler will wrestle the victor of a bout between No. 4 seed Matthew Lebe (West Virginia) and unseeded Michael Savino (Brown).
Senior Jeff Foust (Blue Springs, Mo.) takes on Old Dominion's Adam Wright in the first round in Foust's second trip to the NCAA Championships. Foust finished 2-2 at the 2004 NCAA Championships in St. Louis, Mo., and enters the bracket 15-7 on the season.
The NCAA will provide exclusive live updates of the 2006 NCAA Division 1 Wrestling Championships at www.ncaasports.com. Complete coverage of Missouri wrestlers will be provided at the end of each session at www.mutigers.com. Live coverage of the quarterfinals (10 a.m. Friday, March 17) and semifinals (6 p.m., Friday, March 17) will be provided by ESPNU, while the finals will be broadcast live on ESPN at 6:30 p.m. CST Saturday, March 18. The first round of wrestling begins at 11 a.m. CST in the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, Okla., Thursday, March 16, 2006.