Tiffin University will join some of the top NCAA Division II wrestlers in the nation at West Liberty on Saturday for the 2019 NCAA Division II Super Region Three championships. A total of 10 teams and nearly 100 wrestlers will hit the mats in pursuit of regional honors and a trip to next month's NCAA Division II nationals in Cleveland.
The top three wrestlers in each of the 10 weight classes will advance to the 2019 NCAA Division II National Championships, set for March 8-9 at the Wolstein Center on the campus of Cleveland State University.
Saturday's meet shapes up as perhaps the most challenging of this week's Super Regionals. Nine of the 10 teams received votes in the latest NWCA Top 25 released earlier this week with six of them ranked in the Top 25. The top contenders for team honors figure to be No. 2 Wheeling Jesuit and No. 5 Notre Dame, last year's national runner-up, but the Cardinals and Falcons have anything but an easy path.
While Notre Dame leads the region with seven nationally-ranked wrestlers, No. 13-ranked Indianapolis is bringing six nationally-ranked wrestlers while WJU has five grapplers in the national rankings. No. 13 Tiffin and No. 23 Ashland each have three, No. 20 Lake Erie has two and West Liberty, Bellarmine and Findlay have one each. Urbana rounds out the field.
There are multiple nationally-ranked wrestlers in every weight class – a total of 29 in all – with the Dragons boasting three standouts in three different weight classes. Trey Grine was the highest ranked at 4th at 149 pounds, while Nick Mason (197) was ranked 6th and Hayden Bronne (184) came in at 8th.
Bronne and Mason continue to make their marks in the national wrestling statistics. Both grapplers appear in two separate categories.
Mason continues to impress, holding steady in sole possession of 2nd in the nation in falls and landing just one pin behind the national leader.
Mason trails Lake Erie's Evan Loughman 11-10 while remaiining one ahead of Ryan Vasbinder of McKendree and James Laconte of Western Colorado with 9 pins. Mason leads his 197 pound weight class in pins, while Bronne also makes his appearance in the falls category in 10th with 7 pins. He also leads his weight class of 184 pounds.
Bronne, meanwhile, jumped another spot to 5th in the Most Dominant wrestler category. He manages a 3.83 team point average and is the lone G-MAC wrestler represented on the list. He is 2nd overall in his 184 pound weight class in the category, and 0.9 points removed from leading the country. Mason also makes his first appearance on the list, placing 10th with 3.62 points per match.