March Madness is a phrase reserved for college basketball, but college wrestling has its own madness in March, the month in which wrestlers make their quest for a national championship. The dual meet season is over and the conference tournaments are next on the docket.
The Binghamton University wrestling team is set for the Colonial Athletic Association tournament this weekend. The Bearcats are the defending CAA champions and have three returning individual champions. Senior Anwar Goeres, junior Justin Lister and sophomore Nate Schiedel won titles at 141, 157 and 184 pounds, respectively, last year. Lister parlayed his NCAA qualification into a fourth-place finish in the national tournament, earning All-America honors. This year he will look to make another run, this time at 165.
At the CAA Duals on Jan. 15, Lister lost all three of his matches. That was seemingly the turning point of his season, as he has lost just one match since, a 5-3 decision to Cornell University’s Justin Kerber, who’s currently ranked No. 5 at 165 pounds by InterMat. Lister has added motivation with a chance at revenge on his CAA opponents this weekend.
“You’re taking a kid who took fourth in the country last year and you’re gonna put him in the fourth seed in the CAA tournament,” Binghamton head coach Pat Popolizio said about Lister. “If that doesn’t motivate somebody I don’t know what else would.”
Each team in the conference enters 10 wrestlers into the tournament, one at each weight class. According to Popolizio, sophomores John Paris and Cody Reed will enter at the 197-pound weight class and 285-pound weight class, respectively. Those were the two weight classes that were questionable leading up to the tournament. Every other weight class will be filled with the starters that have been wrestling at those weights all season.
Conference champions earn automatic bids into the NCAA tournament. The NCAA allocates additional qualifying spots across all of the conferences. According to an NCAA release, “Each qualifying tournament was awarded spots per weight class based on current year data. Each wrestler was measured on the following: Division I winning percentage; rating percentage index (RPI); and coaches ranking.”
The CAA has been given one additional spot in the NCAA tournament at 125 pounds, two at 133, one at 149, two at 165 and one at 174. Additionally, at-large selections will be made after the conference tournaments to fill the remaining spots at each weight class. Each weight class at the NCAA tournament will consist of 33 wrestlers. The allocations bode well for some Bearcat wrestlers who might have a tough road toward winning their bracket, such as sophomores Derek Steeley (125) and Dan Riggi (133).
“Steeley’s a perfect example of a kid who’s beaten the No. 2 seed at his weight, but has also lost to the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds,” Popolizio said. “If he can stay consistent, then he should be right on track to get to the national tournament. Riggi on the other hand, he’s going to have to wrestle very well; he’s at a very tough weight, but there’s another extra spot there. In this sport, any given day, anybody, if they put their mind to it and believe, they can beat anybody. So it’s in their hands.”
Sophomore Donnie Vinson, currently ranked No. 9 at 149 pounds by InterMat, and junior Matt Kaylor (157) both qualified for last year’s NCAA tournament without winning conference championships. Vinson placed second and qualified based on weight allocations, and Kaylor placed fourth and earned an at-large bid into the national tournament. Both wrestlers are seeking to win their respective brackets this year.
“We’ve talked about it for a while now — if you want to get to the national tournament you’ve got to win,” Popolizio said. “You’ve got to take it out of the hands of the people who decide the at-large bids. Those guys [Vinson and Kaylor] know what they have to do to qualify, and they’re wrestling good and they’re both going in with No. 1 seeds. If they’re looking to place at the national tournament then this is just a steppingstone for them right now.”
The Bearcats had a program Division I record six NCAA qualifiers last season. Popolizio wants to at least match last year’s total and believes the team is capable of more.
“We have nine guys that have a real shot at getting to the national tournament,” he said. “Is that going to happen? You can’t predict that, but we know we have a shot at qualifying nine guys. I’d definitely like to match what we did last year and we always look to do better. To go from six to nine would be a great accomplishment for us. We’re going to set our goals high and work for that.”
After winning their first-ever CAA Championship last season, the Bearcats have a shot at winning the tournament again this year, with their main competition being Hofstra University, who they beat at the CAA Duals 23-15 when Hofstra was ranked No. 25 in the nation. Although the emphasis for the rest of the season is on individual successes, repeating as conference champions would be a sign of further progress for the program, according to Popolizio.
“It’s not the end of the world if we don’t win it, but I know the way we’ve been training and the mindset of our program is to keep winning,” he said. “We need to keep momentum going for our program. Our guys believe it, our coaches believe it, so we expect that to happen. But we also know we have our work cut out because there’s a lot of good programs and good individuals in our conference. Hofstra’s probably, on paper, a little better, a little more favored. I know our guys are going to have to have a couple of upsets. [Hofstra’s] going to have the No. 1 seed at 165, and someone like Lister is good enough to take that spot. We want to keep winning; our goal is to win.”
The two-day CAA Championship is scheduled for a 1 p.m. start Friday at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J.