About 16 months ago, anybody who followed Mizzou Wrestling figured that heavyweight Mark Ellis was about to lose his starting role to incoming freshman Dom Bradley.  Now, he's a national champion.  Ellis won a crazy final match in OT over Duke's Konrad Dudziak, and he is Mizzou's second national wrestling champ.  Congrats to Mr. Ellis and congrats to Brian Smith for continuing to build a big-time national program.  Mizzou is alive and well in the post-Askren era.

UPDATE: For those with ESPN360, it's got the replay of the finals matches.  Tune to the 2:35 mark for Ellis.

UPDATE #2: I almost forgot...

All told, a pretty positive night for the wrestling Tigers, as they will finish the season with a team record five All-Americans and very likely a top-7 finish nationally.  The wrestle-back finals will be tomorrow around noon on ESPN, and Mizzou will have four wrestlers participating, while Mark Ellis will close down the Championship round later on ESPN.  Seeing as I leave for Mexico in about 8 hours and feel bad I wont be able to cover the finals, here is a run down of today's action for each wrestler and what they have left.

Mike Chandler - 157 - #6 seed

Chandler started the day with a hard-fought loss to #3 seed and returning Champion Jordan Leen from Cornell.  Needing to win his next match to secure an All-American standing, he defeated Jonny Bonilla-Bowman from Hofstra 6-4.  He scored 5 points in the 2nd period and added riding time to seal the win.  He then moved on to face Tyler Safratrovich of Minnesota and scored a major decision, winning 13-2.  This means he will face #4 Gregor Gillespe (who lost in the semis to #1 Jordan Burroughs of NU by the score of 12-4).  If Chandler is victorious, he would potentially face Leen again for 3rd, as Leen lost to #2 seed Mike Poeta of Illinois).  If he loses to Gillespe, he will wrestle for 5th place.

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Another Big XII Championship has come and gone, and with an interesting twist this time around.  As I talked about in this piece, Nebraska could potentially have had a shot at overtaking Iowa State this season, especially if 125 champion Paul Donahoe were still on the team.  In the end, the Big XII Championship would end in a tie as NU and ISU would each score 70 points with the Tigers not terribly far behind in 3rd place.   Let's take a quick look at each weight class to see where some surprise efforts (both good and bad) were found.

125 - Troy Dolan did not get much done at this first Championship, and Joey Fio scored a mild upset in the first of what would be a number of disappointing outcomes for the Cyclones on their way through the championships.

133 - I said I would be very surprised if Todd Schavrien was able to receive a NCAA wildcard.  Well, color me even more surprised when he came back from his first round loss to Vacanti of NU to win two in a row and earn the third berth from this class.  Fanthorpe of ISU did what I expected and moved through with fairly little problem

141 - Another surprise was certainly here, though maybe the biggest surprise is that it may no longer be considered a surprise.  You see, Marcus Hoehn was fairly unremarkable as a 141 pound junior, and many expected him to lose his spot to Ashtin Primus, who was coming off of a redshirt season.  So when Hoehn retained the spot, the surprises started.  He went on through the season and slowly made his way up the conference and national charts.  He upset Nick Gallick at the last dual of the season to earn the #1 seed in the Big XII's.  He would go on to win the championship and gives himself a tremendous shot at earning a top-8 seed at the NCAA's.  Get one of those, hold your seed and you are an All-American.  But let's leave all of that for another day and focus on congratulating and honoring a wonderful achievement by this senior.

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{no update, but I will move it back to the top for a little longer until The Boy's aTm Preview later this evening.  If I can, I will come back around and add the seeds whenever they are actually released}

I have poured up and down the site to try to link to my preview from last year, but it seems it is either gone or I never wrote it :-)  At any rate, I like to run down each weight class quickly and talk about the Mizzou wrestler participating and predicting their finish, while also predicting the overall winner of the class (in case I dont think someone from Mizzou will take it).  This is much easier when the Big XII office gets the seeding out earlier than TONIGHT, so this will involve some guess-work.  The action gets underway tomorrow and it looks like Huskers.com is your place to start for coverage.  I will do my best to be around as much as possible on Saturday and update results as they come in.  In the meantime, let's get to the previewin'

As always, rankings are from Intermat as of 3/3

125 (3 spots):

Been a tough year for the Tigers at this weight class.  They saw a lot of potential from one of the fighting Pescaglia brothers last year, only to see him blow out the knee and not make it back.  In the end, he was not able to get back to the mat this season and RS Frosh Troy Dolan got the call for the season.  At times, he certainly showed some decent potential, but at other times, not as much.  With his 4 or 5 seed, he has his road cut out for him, and will need to win either his first two matches (not likely since his 2nd match would be against the #1 seed or he will need to come back and win later to secure the 3rd place slot.  There are 3 top-15 wrestlers in this weight class, so I don't see Dolan getting there.

Prediction:  I like Tyler Clark of ISU to best Joey Fio of Oklahoma, which will start ISU on their path towards winning the tournament

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So...you know how I said all year that the top three from each of the ten weight classes in the Big XII automatically qualify for the NCAA Tournament?  Um....yeah....I was wrong.

The NCAA instituted some pretty serious changes in the selection criteria, and released those recently.  Turns out, three Mizzou wrestlers have ALREADY MADE the NCAA tournament, regardless of how they place at the Big XII Championships (which will be next Saturday).

Let's review the changes and how they will affect the Big XII Championships

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I think I am going to forgo the Monday Musings for a little while longer, but I did want to review a pretty big weekend for the Tigers which they just had down in Oklahoma.  Used to be the Tigers would travel down to OK and be lucky to come out with one win of the two.  The power has shifted a bit, especially with Okie State rebuilding like they are (more on that in a bit).  The Tigers were looking to rebound from their tough, one-point loss at home against NU from the previous weekend and to pick up some needed wins in the Big XII as they wind down the dual (and conference) season.  Mizzou took on OU on Friday night in Norman before traveling to Stillwater Saturday night to take on the pokes.  Let's take a look back at the action, as we have plenty to cover.  As always, rankings are from Intermat Wrestle.com as of 2/3/09

vs. #14 Oklahoma

No bonus points were achieved in this dual, as the Tigers would get down early (as they often do), but fight back through the middle and heavy weights to take six matches of the ten for the 18-12 win.  Troy Dolan put up a decent effort against #7 Joey Fio before losing 8-4.  At 133, Todd Schavrien would make the start (as he has been battling injury and splitting time with Taylor Crane) and lose a tight one to Brian Shelton 5-3.  Mizzou found themselves down 6-0 as #10 Marcus Hoehn took the mat against Seth Vernon. Hoehn would come away with another solid win by the score of 8-2, halving the Sooner lead at 6-3.  Up next at 149, Andrew Sherry stepped out against #8 Kyle Terry.  Falling 8-3, the Tigers would be back down six points at 9-3. But as has happened most of the season, the bigger weights would step up and start the process of pulling away.

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So...I have this one Fox Sports something-or-other....I will cover it live as best I can as the #12 Tigers travel up to #2 Cornell to take on the Big Red

Starting at 125, 11-15 Troy Dolan vs. #2 Nickerson who is 8-0

Updates to come in the thread.

Yeah...lord knows I am setting myself up here for disappointment in looking at this, but hey...it may give some of you a better idea about the one of the top (if not THE top) programs in the nation.  I don't know that this is going to need a lot of extra thought, so this one may be a tad shorter than the previous two...you will understand once you see the matchups.  Let's get right to it!

125: An unranked redshirt freshman Troy Dolan against #4 senior and two-time All-American Charlie Falck.  Advantage: Iowa

133: An (now) unranked sophmore Todd Schavrien against #5 junior Daniel Dennis.  Advantage: Iowa

141: #10 senior Marcus Hoehn, who is having a tremendous season thus far against #1 senior and All-American Alex Tsirtsis (who just defeated Hoehn at Midlands).  Advantage: Iowa

149: Unranked senior Andrew Sherry against #1 junior Hodge Trophey and NCAA Champion Brent Metcalf.  Advantage: Iowa

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