2019 NCAA Championships

First Round Upsets At The 2019 NCAA Tournament

First Round Upsets At The 2019 NCAA Tournament

Cataloguing all of the lower seeded wrestlers that upset higher seeds in the first round of the 2019 NCAA Tournament.

Mar 21, 2019 by Wrestling Nomad
First Round Upsets At The 2019 NCAA Tournament
The first session of NCAAs is over, and before we bring you our top matches for Thursday night, here are the best upsets from this afternoon.

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The first session of NCAAs is over, and before we bring you our top matches for Thursday night, here are the best upsets from this afternoon.

NCAA Brackets in FloArena | NCAA Championship Hub

Every upset mentioned below is based on seeds and nothing else.

125 Pounds

Every single wrestler seeded higher won their first round match.


133 Pounds

#24 DJ Fehlman (Lock Haven) 7-2 over #9 Chas Tucker (Cornell)

Getting in on Tuesday night means a whole extra day to speak with coaches and get some intel on who is ready to bust up some brackets. Lock Haven assistant Nate Carr was absolutely certain Fehlman would be problems, and he proved that right away.

Losing 2-1 after the first, Tucker deferred allowing Fehlman to take top. He proceeded to turn Tucker with a tilt for four, picked up two stall calls, and rode out the period, giving him six points to push to a 7-2 win. That avenged Fehlman's only loss at 133 this season. He'll have eight seed John Erneste of Missouri in round two.


141 Pounds

#23 Sam Turner (Wyoming) 4-2 over #10 Nick Gil (Navy)

#22 Max Murin (Iowa) 3-2 over #11 Tristan Moran (Wisconsin)

#19 Sa'Derian Perry (Old Dominion) 5-1 over #14 Jamel Morris (NC State)

Turner has had upsets in previous tournaments, and this time took out senior Gil, an EIWA finalist. At that conference tournament, I mentioned Navy's ability to win matches without scoring takedowns, but it was Turner, with two escapes in the second and riding out Gil in the third (plus a stall point) that allowed him to win 4-2. Moran did not wrestle when Iowa came to Wisconsin, and they did not meet at Big Tens. Murin's second period takedown proved to be the difference in the match. Perry over Morris is only an upset by seed, as the former EMU Eagle was an All-American last year.


149 Pounds

#26 Ryan Blees (Virginia Tech) 5-1SV over #7 Kaden Gfeller (Oklahoma State)

#20 Tommy Thorn (Minnesota) 5-4 over #13 Anthony Artalona (Penn)

#19 Cole Martin (Wisconsin) 8-6SV2 over #14 Requir Van der Merwe (Stanford)

The former Cowboy Blees put a big dent in the Cowboys team race hopes when he took Gfeller to his back in overtime. Blees now gets a shot at Pat Lugo, while Gfeller will have to rebound against Josh Maruca of Arizona State.

Thorn, a 2017 AA, was leading the whole match against true freshman Artalona, but the Quaker hit a beautiful arm spin with less than 15 seconds to go and looked to have iced the match. But Thorn rolled his way into a reversal with three seconds left to take the 5-4 win. Martin won a crazy scramble over Van der Merwe in the second sudden victory and even cost Stanford a challenge brick in the process.


157 Pounds

#21Justin Thomas (Oklahoma) over #12 Taleb Rahmani (Pittsburgh)

#20 Luke Weiland (Army) over #13 Jarrett Jacques (Missouri)

#19 Griffin Parriott (Purdue) 7-4 over #14 Zach Hartman (Bucknell)

Thomas and Rahmani were tied at one very late until the Sooner put Rahmani on his back, upsetting the home crowd. Weiland, a native of Missouri who went to Seckman high school, upset the true freshman Jacques of Weiland's home state Tigers. Parriott negated Hartman's top game with two takedowns in the first period, and then escaped right away in the second. He'll get a rematch of his CKLV final against Ryan Deakin in the second round.


165 Pounds

#24 Cael McCormick (Army) 2:24 fall over #9 Demetrius Romero (Utah Valley)

#21 Te'Shan Campbell (Ohio State) 6-0 over #12 Ebed Jarrell (Drexel)

Romero was a trendy pick to outperform his seed after the way he looked in winning Big 12s, but that was based on him breaking guys in the third period, which is hard to do when you get pinned in the first. While Jarrell was seeded ahead, I feel most wrestling fans had this one picked out as a potential upset in their brackets.


174 Pounds

#22 Ben Harvey (Army) 8-3 over #11 Dylan Lydy (Purdue)

#20 Spencer Carey (Navy) 10-5 over #13 Brit Wilson (Northern Illinois)

How about this for some stone cold revenge: Ben Harvey loses to Dylan Lydy 3-1 in sudden victory of the Indiana state finals their senior year of high school. Harvey goes to West Point, lying in wait for his opportunity to knock off Lydy, who stayed in state. Their first meeting in college was in the first round of the NCAA tournament, and Harvey takes him down three times plus earns riding time. Carey earned four takedowns to beat Wilson and gets Myles Amine tonight.


184 Pounds

#26 Dakota Geer (Oklahoma State) 6-0 #7 over Nick Reenan (NC State)

#19 Cameron Caffey (Michigan State) 7-5 over #14 Dylan Wisman (Missouri)

Reenan sems to have been battling injuries the last month or so, and Geer is probably happy to be wrestling guys his same size again. Geer shut Reenan out in the battle of former FloNats champs, which means Reenan who made Final X this summer, has yet to win a match at the NCAA tournament. Caffey was looking to earn himself a good seed before a couple losses to Max Lyon and Jordan Atienza pushed him down. He rebounded with a win over Wisman in the first round.


197 Pounds

#24 Jake Jakobsen (Lehigh) 8-5 over #9 Ben Honis (Cornell)

#21 Thomas Lane (Cal Poly) 8-3 over #12 Rocco Caywood (Army)

#18 Jake Woodley (Oklahoma) 4-3TB2 over Randall Diabe (App State)

Not to point myself on the back, but I am. I picked out all three of these upsets as first round matches to watch in my 197 pound preview. Jakobsen over Honis I picked because it's difficult to beat a rival three times in a season, but I also want to point out the season Jakobsen had. It wasn't clear he would even be the starter at the beginning of the year, then after earning the spot he had a very serious medical scare. But the Lehigh coaching staff was able to find an answer for it, and Jakobsen responded with the biggest win of his college career.

The Caywood one wasn't terribly hard to pick out after he struggled at EIWAs, needing a wildcard to qualify. But Lane still got it done in his second trip to nationals. Woodley over Diabe reversed a result from the regular season and I believe was the only match to be decided in second tiebreakers this session.


285 Pounds

#28 Sam Stoll (Iowa) 8-5 over #5 Mason Parris (Michigan)

#20 Zach Elam (Missouri) 3-1SV over #13 Matt Voss (George Mason)

#19 Brian Andrews (Wyoming) 9-2 over AJ Nevills (Fresno State)

The fifth year senior and returning All-American Stoll completely controlled the match over true freshman Parris, who not only was perceived to be the strangest five seed this year, but was also clearly giving up 40 or more pounds. Now Stoll will get Conan Jennings, who he beat during the year. Elam over Voss was another that I bet a good bit of fans had picked in their brackets, and was the only true freshman to pull an upset in round one. The Junior world silver medalist gets Jordan Wood tonight, who was a Cadet silver medalist of his own in 2014. Half of the 19 seeds beat 14 seeds, including Andrew avenging a loss to Nevills in a dual last month.