Kent State's Magnificent Seven Ready for NCAA Wrestling Championships
3/13/2012 12:00:00 AM | Wrestling
Bios & Match-by-Match Results of all 7 Qualifiers
A school record seven Kent State wrestlers will compete at the 2012 NCAA Championships March 15-17 at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis. Seniors Nic Bedelyon (Lewistown, Pa.) and Brendan Barlow (Westerville, Ohio), junior Keith Witt (Oak Harbor, Ohio), sophomore Tyler Small (Littlestown, Pa.) and freshman Ian Miller (Oak Harbor, Ohio) all earned automatic bids into their 33-man brackets, while juniors Casey Newburg (Union, Ohio) and Mallie Shuster (Newville, Pa.) earned at-large bids.
The No. 13 Golden Flashes look to improve on its 17th place finish last season and hope to crown a national champion for the second straight season, following Dustin Kilgore's title run in 2011. Bedelyon and Miller will be the top two candidates to follow in Kilgore's footsteps, as each earned No. 5 seeds. Thursday's opening round will begin at noon Eastern, while Saturday's finals begin at 7:30. The three-day event is sold out.
Live audio for every Kent State match can be heard on KentStateSports.com with Ty Linder. Coverage will begin at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday and 10:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday.
ESPN3.com will provide four-screen, four-mat viewing throughout the tournament.
On Friday, two of the four quarterfinals, as well as the semifinals, will be televised on ESPNU in a revised side-by-side format, allowing viewers to catch the action in two matches at the same time.
ESPNU will also televise Saturday's Session V medal round, while the championship finals can be seen on ESPN.
Live stats can be viewed on trackwrestling.com. Kent State updates throughout the tournament can also be seen on Twitter @ksuathletics.
NCAA Tournament History
Kent State has produced 21 All-Americans at the NCAA Championships dating back to Cameron Falcone's third place finish in 1939. That season under Head Coach Joe Begala, the Golden Flashes finished 12th as a team. Begala's teams earned fifth place in both 1941 and 1942, the highest finishes in program history. Until last season, 1941 & 1942 were also the only two seasons in which Kent State wrestlers (Mike Slepecky, Walter Porowski) earned spots in the championship finals. Over the last three seasons, four Golden Flashes (Kilgore, Bedelyon, Danny Mitcheff, Jermail Porter) have combined for five All-American finishes.
The M.A.C. Center in Kent served as the host of the NCAA
Championships in 1963 and 1967.
On a Roll
Kent State won 12 of its last 13 dual meets, including a perfect 5-0 record in Mid-American Conference duals. KSU has now won an outright regular season conference crown twice in four years and at least share of the MAC title three times during that span. The Flashes' only setback in the last three months came against No. 1 Minnesota. In fact, all of Kent State's losses came against teams currently ranked in the Top 10. Nine of the Flashes' dual victories were double-digit margins. Since the 2005-06 season, Kent State has gone 99-31-1 in duals meets. The Golden Flashes have not lost a MAC dual to a team other than Central Michigan since 2005, going 27-0-1 against the combination of Northern Illinois, Buffalo, Ohio and Eastern Michigan.
In the Rankings
- Seven Kent State wrestlers are ranked in the Top 30 according to the Final (Feb. 21) Division I Coaches Poll.
- Four Golden Flashes are ranked in the Top 15 spots in five different polls, while three KSU grapplers are in the Top 10 according to Amateur Wrestling News.
- The Golden Flashes were No. 3 in the final National Wrestling Media Association's Mid-Major Poll, behind Cornell and Wyoming.
- Kent State was represented in the Top 4 of all 10 weight classes in the final MAC rankings, including four (Nic Bedelyon, Tyler Small, Ian Miller, Keith Witt) at the No. 1 spot.
