Three-time Big Ten champion Kollin Moore finished second in the Dan Hodge Trophy voting, earning three first-place votes. He was the only Buckeye to finish the season with a perfect record, and one of just eight Division I wrestlers to do so this year.
Iowa's Spencer Lee, a two-time NCAA Champion, won the honor with 52 of a possible 57 first-place votes. Northwestern's Ryan Deakin and Stanford's Shane Griffith each received one first-place vote.
Moore was one of eight finalists for the award, presented annually to the nation's best wrestler in Division I. The trophy is named for Dan Hodge, the three-time NCAA champ (1955-57) from the University of Oklahoma who went 46-0 in his college career, recording 36 pins while never allowing a takedown.
Criteria for the award include overall record, number of pins, dominance and quality of competition. Past credentials, sportsmanship, citizenship and heart are secondary criteria used when two finalists have similar stats.
Moore's 27 wins include 10 major decisions, six tech falls and four pins. Nearly half of his wins came against opponents ranked in the top-25, and he earned bonus points in eight of those 13 bouts. Setting aside his four wins by fall, he outscored the competition 341-116 (+225).
He was the No. 1 seed at 197 pounds had the NCAA Wrestling Championships happened earlier this month in Minneapolis as scheduled. He was the top-ranked wrestler in the class all season long.
Ohio State legend Logan Stieber is the only Buckeye to win the Hodge, winning the 2015 trophy after becoming just the fourth wrestler in NCAA history to win four Division I titles, leading the Buckeyes to the school's first-ever NCAA Championship in the process.
