NCAA Rankings 2018-19

174 Zahid Indeed

Zahid avenged a regular season loss to both Daniel Lewis and Mark Hall to win his second consecutive national title and reclaim the #1 spot in the rankings. 

The strength of his regular season and the vagaries of double elimination cross-bracketing left Kutler ahead of Labriola in the rankings despite the latter placing better than the former in Pittsburgh. Ditto for Taylor Lujan getting ranked higher than All-Americans Devin Skatzka. Lujan actually beat Skatzka in the second round of the NCAAs but finished out of the top eight when he lost to #6 seed David McFadden in the bloodround. Meanwhile, Skatzkza broke through to the medal matches by defeating #22 seed Ben Harvey of Army. 

Three surprises of the tournament were the aforementioned Harvey, #33 seed Devin Kane and #29 seed Joe Grello. Kane made it to the round of 12 while Grello was stopped in the round of 16. All three made it into the final top 20 ranking of the season thanks to their efforts in PPG Paints Arena. 

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