Chris Wade is long gone, but this season it appears that a new face is ready to emerge as the face of Binghamton wrestling, and once again it’s a freshman: 174-pound Josh Patterson.

The Binghamton wrestling team opened up its season at the Navy Wrestling Classic, finishing 11th in the field of 13. The story of the match, however, was the performance of Patterson, BU’s top recruit and a nationally ranked wrestling prospect who won three matches before falling to Navy’s Matthew Stolpinski, 11-6, in the title bout. Stolpinski qualified for the 2006 NCAA tournament and has been ranked in the top 20.

Patterson, the third seed in the tournament, defeated the second seed, Andrew Jordan of Bloomsburg, 5-3 in the semifinals.

No other BU wrestler finished among the top six in his field. Freshman Kareem Naguib won two matches in the back draw at 133 pounds, and junior transfer Kyle Fried, weighing in at 149 pounds, won twice in the consolation bracket.

Sophomore Nate Patterson was seeded third in his bracket, but dropped his opening match 10-4 before pinning a wrestler from Liberty in 1:09 in the first round of wrestlebacks.