A Buckeye has won an individual national championship in wrestling in seven of the last eight NCAA Wrestling Championship tournaments.
Top-seeded at 149 pounds, Sammy Sasso aims to make it eight of nine. He and six of his teammates enter the lists Thursday morning in St. Louis, vying for postseason glory.
Five Buckeyes earned automatic qualifications to the tournament by dint of their placement at the Big Ten Championships earlier this month, while Dylan D'Emilio (141 pounds) and Rocky Jordan (184) received at-large bids in the 330-man field. Sasso, along with Malik Heinselman (125), Ethan Smith (165) and Kaleb Romero (174) enter the tournament as Top-10 seeds, while D'Emilio, Jordan and heavyweight Tate Orndorff find themselves seeded between 21st and 30th in their respective brackets.
As with the Big Ten tourney, Iowa is the prohibitive favorite to win it all, but the highest-seeded Buckeyes are on track to earn All-American honors by placing in the Top 8 of their individual weight classes. Sasso is expected to wrestle in the tournament's final round for an NCAA title, but it's not a stretch to think that Heinselman, Sasso and Romero will also find themselves wrestling in Sunday's placement matches.
Live coverage of the tournament will be carried on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU starting with Thursday's opening bouts at 11 a.m. The network will carry multiple mats in its broadcast coverage, with the daytime rounds Thursday and Friday airing on ESPNU; primetime sessions will air both nights on either ESPN or ESPN2, with the championship round Saturday evening on ESPN. Every mat will be available for individual streaming on ESPN3 via the ESPN App.
Less than 24 hours from the first whistle
— Ohio State Wrestling (@wrestlingbucks) March 17, 2021
Sessions 1 & 2 will be split by the first five weights (A) & the last five weights (B)
Session 3 is light weights & Session 4 is upper weights
Follow our Twitter for match updates, mat assignments, & streaming info#GoBuckeyes pic.twitter.com/k4TjIAEyUQ
Action through the quarterfinal round will be split between lightweights and upperweights; for example, the 11 a.m. session airing Thursday on ESPNU will feature 125 through 157 pounds, with 165 through heavyweight airing in the 2 p.m. session.
What to Expect
It's been a tough season for the Buckeyes, as evident by the fact that three members of the team will be watching at home, having been passed over for at-large bids. For the three members of the team seeded outside the Top 20, the path to earning All-American honors is an uphill climb.
Sasso, as a result of earning the top seed in his bracket, has the clearest path to the title. He'll get a solid test in Friday evening's semifinals from either Boo Lewallen of Oklahoma State, or perhaps a Big Ten rematch with Nebraska's Ridge Lovett. Presuming he makes it Saturday night, he'll expect to face North Carolina's Austin O'Connor or Mizzouri's Brock Mauller, both formidable contenders in their own right.
At 165 and 175, Ethan Smith and Kaleb Romero each earned a seven-seed berth. Smith will have to make it through Travis Wittlake of Oklahoma State and Anthony Valencia of Arizona State to make it to the semifinals, where he'd expect to face Jake Wentzel of Pitt. This will be his first match against Wittlake or Valencia, but he dropped a narrow 3-2 decision to Wentzel last year in dual-meet action.
Romero's path is similar, in that he'll likely face Missouri's 10 seed Peyton Mocco in the second round, and then Utah Valley's Demetrius Romero (no relation, so far as we're aware) in the quarters. The semifinals would likely be a rematch with Penn State's Carter Starocci, who is 2-0 versus Romero after a pair of low-scoring decisions over the past month.
Heinselman, at 125 pounds, finds himself in the bottom half of his bracket, with an opening match versus Penn State's Robert Howard. Heinselman won a 5-2 decision over Howard at both in the dual meet earlier this season and at the Big Ten tournament. He would likely face Utah Valley's Taylor LaMont in the second round, and Virginia Tech's No. 2 seed Sam Latona in the quarters. This class is Spencer Lee's to lose, but Heinselman has wrestled this season like a guy who will finish on the All-American podium.
D'Emilio got the toughest draw of all the Buckeyes in the tournament; as the No. 30 seed, he'll face Rutgers superstar Sebastian Rivera, and hope to find a manageable path in the Wrestlebacks to put some points on the board for his team.
Jordan will open against Missouri's Jeremiah Kent, the ninth seed at 184. From there he'd likely face Nebraska's Taylor Venz if he advances in the championship bracket. At heavyweight, Orndorff opens with a chance to avenge his Big Ten tournament loss to Nebraska's Christian Lance, and if he advances will face Iowa's Tony Cassioppi; Cassioppi has pinned Orndorff twice already this season.
It will be a different tournament for the Buckeyes than what they've experienced in recent years. Under head coach Tom Ryan (since 2007), the Buckeyes have finished in the Top 10 at the NCAA Championships in all but one season; this may be the team's toughest battle to place in the upper echelons yet, but Sasso, Heinselman and Smith are riding a lot of momentum, and if Romero's ankle has healed up he'll be a threat to place as well. Final team placement will come down to how many bonus point wins those four can notch in the early rounds, and how far guys like Jordan and Orndorff can advance in the wrestlebacks.
