Hello from Fort Worth, Texas, the livestock capital of the world and the location of Senior Nationals, where bids to the 2024 Olympic Team Trials have been earned.  

We'll talk more about Sr Nats later. What we will discuss more immediately is this blog's primary concern, namely the NCAA D1 wrestling week that was. 

Box Scores | Rankings | Last Week's Roundup

The holiday season is slowing the collegiate wrestling world down, but there were still scads of noteworthy happenings from week 7 of the 2023-24 season, so let's get noting!

The Dual of the Century of the Week: App State vs North Carolina

There are eight (EIGHT!) D1 programs in the great state of North Carolina, so we figured now was as good as any to highlight two of the best!

App State pulled off the --don't call it an--upset thanks to consecutive pins from Will Miller and Lucas Uliano at 165 and 174, as well as a clutch 2-1 victory by Isaac Byers over Derek Guanajuato at 141, to defeat the Tar Heels 24-14. 

UNC could argue that they were without #5 Lachlan McNeil at 141 who was busy qualifying for the Canadian national team at 65kg, but every team deals with those kinds of things (well, maybe not Canadian Nationals specifically but things like injuries, etc) so that's not to take anything away from App State, just making note!

App State has an incredible rivalry with fellow SoCon member Campbell, but more intra-state rivalries are never a bad thing. That's NC wrestling, baby!

App State head coach JohnMark Bentley had this to say after the big win: 

𝘽𝙚𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙙 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙘𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙨 🎥

Coach Bentley addresses the team in the locker room following the 24-14 win against No. 21 North Carolina.#ReAchTheSummit pic.twitter.com/PuLtzVc8Uf

— App State Wrestling (@AppWrestling) December 18, 2023

Other Duals Happened

Missouri grounded Air Force 38 to 3 (I'm sure the Falcons are sick of people saying "grounded" in their sports headlines but it's a first to me and I promise to retire it from my repertoire after tonight). 

Is Keegan O'Toole undefeated and perfect in his bonus rate so far this year? Yes. Yes he is. 

165 | (1) @KeeganOtoole with his eighth bonus-point win in eight matches this season, defeating (17) Giano Petrucelli, 24-12. 😤

MIZ 25, AF 0 #MIZ 🐯 | #TigerStyle pic.twitter.com/ngS9B2ajtx

— Mizzou Wrestling (@MizzouWrestling) December 17, 2023

The Falcon did get a command performance from Sam Wolf at 184, however, as Wolf beat #7 Clayton Whiting 4-1 in sudden victory in a minor upset. 

Virginia Tech defeated Stanford 29 to 7 which included a bunch of interesting results. 

Cooper Flynn came out of Olympic redshirt and defeated current #1 Nico Provo at 125. That's a pretty good sign that Flynn will be the starter going forward over Eddie Ventresca. 125 continues to be a swirling cauldron of chaos. 

The Cardinal notched a nice win at 157, as #7 Daniel Cardenas majored #6 Bryce Andonian 15-7.

The Hokies responded with a minor upset at 165 as #26 Connor Brady beat #16 Hunter Garvin 10-3

Mekhi Lewis showed off his unearthly takedown defense as he majored the young #26 Lorenzo Norman 8-0. 

Mekhi Lewis - still VERY hard to takedown.#ALLINALLTHETIME #Hokies 🦃 pic.twitter.com/RrGAqBDfgv

— Virginia Tech Wrestling (@HokiesWrestling) December 17, 2023

And true freshman Sonny Sasso got the nod at 197, defeating #16 Nick Stemmet 8-4. Sasso is already 8-5 on the year but can still retain his redshirt status as he only has 3 (or 4, I forget if the CKLV counts as 1 or 2 starts) varsity starts. 

Lastly, Nebraska outlasted South Dakota State, 21-17.

The Huskers won all four ranked matchups, at 125, 157, 165 and 184. The Jackrabbits were competitive throughout the dual, however, and a tech fall from senior leader Tanner Sloan at 197 and a forfeit at heavyweight kept the margin of victory to four points. 

Additionally, the Biggest Little City in the World Hosted A Tournament Of Champions

The excellent city of Reno played host to high school tournaments of the male and female variety, NAIA duals, women's college duals, and a men's college wrestling tournament. 

Air Force's Wyatt Hendrickson was the lone Falcon at the Reno ToC's college tournament. He won the heavyweight division. 

Former Wyoming Cowboy and current Oklahoma Sooner #3 Stephen Buchanan won the 197-pound weight class over current Wyoming Cowboy #18 Joey Novak. Three other Sooners won titles as Oklahoma secured the team title as well. 

The marquee match of the tournament was the 125-pound final, as Wyoming's #11 Jore Volk defeated #3 Richie Figueroa of Arizona State, who was making his first start of the season. Good luck figuring out 125, rankers! I mean that, I sincerely wish you good luck! It's not an easy job!

Jore Volk was named Outstanding Wrestler of the RTOC after he won the 125-pound title, besting No. 1 in the process.

📰| https://t.co/oYEjET0r7X#OneWyoming • #LCT

— Wyoming Cowboy Wrestling (@WyoWrestle) December 18, 2023

The Collegiate Wrestling Duals by Journeymen Are Today

One of the best events of the year starts on Monday, the day after the Senior Nationals, which means today if you are reading this Roundup on the same day that it gets published, which is Monday. 

Six top 30 dual teams including four of the top 10 ranked dual teams will be in Tennessee on Monday and Tuesday for a noxious, gnarly, and noisome knuckler in Nashville. Behold, the list of participants:  

• #2 NC State
• #3 Cornell
• #7 Iowa State
• #9 Ohio State
• #15 Pittsburgh
• #27 Northern Iowa
• Lock Haven
• Little Rock

That's a lot of quality teams and ranked wrestlers. Rokfin will be streaming, or you can check it out in person!

Montgomery Bell Academy: Nashville TN pic.twitter.com/zB00Tb6UwR

— Journeymen Wrestling (@jmenwrestling) December 18, 2023

We've Got Conference Rankings

It's early in the season but we've still got four recently updated conference-specific rankings!

• Big 12 Rankings
• EIWA Rankings
• Big Ten Rankings
• ACC Rankings

Disagree with any of the rankings? I bet some of you do. Let us know! Even if you are rude about it, we'll still take your input into consideration. That's not a challenge, by the way. I don't want you to be rude to our rankers. Just saying, we welcome feedback of all kinds!

We've also got recently updated our NCAA Division III rankings! I know this is a NCAA D1 blog but being a former DIII athlete myself, I feel duty-bound to mention them. Check them out here. 

Senior Nationals Was A Delight!

For fans of the Olympic styles, Senior Nationals provided a welcome showcase of talented American freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestlers.

You can check out all of Flo's coverage here, and there was a LOT of coverage. 

Penn State had three committed high school recruits place in the top 8, while Stanford had one commit make the podium. Learn more about the tournaments of Luke Lilledahl, Joe Sealey, Connor Mirasola and Aden Valencia here!

The only current collegiate wrestler to win their bracket was Northern Colorado's Andrew Alirez, who won the 65kg division in extremely impressive fashion. Alirez, the 2023 NCAA champ who is taking an Olympic Redshirt year, will be a contender to make the Olympic team when the trials roll around next April in State College, PA. 

Check out a list of all the wrestlers who qualified for the Olympic Team Trials here. Anyone not on that list has to win either the NCAA Championships or the Last Chance Qualifier for a shot at Olympic glory in Paris. 

Shameless Plug For FloWrestling Original Videos

One thing you often hear from the wrestling community is that they want the sport to be more accessible in order to draw in more new fans to the world's oldest and raddest sport. And we here at FloSports couldn't agree more! 

That's why we've been putting more and more of our best content on YouTube, so that you diehards reading this (free) blog can share those videos with your friends and family, all for free!

My Name Is Jordan has been available for free on YouTube for six years. Have you seen it yet? It's one of our most viewed videos!

Send Me Tips!

This roundup is for you, so if you see something noteworthy happen in D1 NCAA wrestling, let me know so that I can make note of it! 

Best way to reach me is on Twitter (@speywrestle) or email [andrew.spey@flosports.tv].

Next weekend I'll be home for the first time in about two months. All the better to watch more D1 duals in my opinion. See you then!