By Andy Elder
ST. LOUIS — The Big Ten coaches’ faith in wildcards Nate Galloway of Penn State and Kirk Nail of Ohio State was rewarded in the first round.
Galloway posted two wins at 157 pounds, a 5-3 pigtail win over Virginia’s Paul Bjorlo and a 7-4 upset of West Virginia No. 7 seed Matt Lebe.
Nail also pulled an upset, a 3-2 win over Navy No. 8 heavyweight Tanner Garrett.
Also, Indiana 184-pounder Andy Rios, who as the first alternate subbed in for injured 141-pound teammate Mike Simpson, won 14-6.
Upset City
There were upsets up and down the list of weights, and we’ll get to them, but no weight was impacted more than 197.
And no wrestler potentially benefited more than No. 2 seed Jake Rosholt of Oklahoma State. His half of the 197-pound bracket was purged of half of the seeded wrestlers.
No. 3 Chris Skretkowicz of Hofstra was pinned by unseeded Darren Burns of North Carolina Greensboro.
No. 6 J.D. Bergman of Ohio State was nipped 3-2 in an overtime tiebreaker by unseeded Casey Phelps of Boise State.
And, No. 10 Jerry Rinaldi of Cornell fell 7-1 to unseeded Phil Davis of Penn State.
The next biggest upset after Skretkowicz was Muzaffar Abdurakhmanov, the No. 4 seed from American. Unseeded Citadel 157-pounder Travis Piccard beat the native of Uzbekistan 7-3.
Also at 157, No. 9 Derek Zinck of Lehigh lost 7-4 to unseeded C.P. Schlatter of Minnesota, 7-4.
Coming Attractions
The NCAA Wrestling Committee has announced its five finalists in contention to host the 2008-2011 championships. In alphabetical order, they are: Cleveland; Des Moines, Iowa; Omaha, Neb.; and Philadelphia.
The wrestling committee hopes to forward a site recommendation for all four years to the Division I Championships/Competition Cabinet for their review and approval at either their June or September 2005 meeting.
Attendance
So much for the NCAA insisting on moving the championships off campus and into big-city arenas. That theory’s being tested in St. Louis for the second year in a row.
Attendance for Thursday’s sessions was 15,409 and 15,391 in Session I and II, respectively. That’s well below the almost 20,000 per session most NCAA bigwigs predicted when St. Louis was awarded the championships an unprecedented three times in five years.
It looks like it’s back to the drawing board for the brain trust.
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