West Region Championship | Event Website
Augsburg College
Saturday March 2nd, 9:00AM
12 Teams – Scroll to page middle
d3wrestle.com Rankings | NWCA Team Rankings
Ranked Teams: #18 St. John’s, #20 Augsburg, #21 Concordia-Moorhead,
d3wrestle.com Top Ten Individuals (Returning AA in Bold)
125 – #6 Fuenffinger (Augsburg), #8 Ambrocio (CUW)
133 – none
141 – none
149 – #6 Sanders (CUW)
157 – none
165 – #2 Kulchytskyy (Oshkosh)
174 – #8 Schiferl (Oshkosh)
184 – #4 Hagan (St. John’s)
197 – none
285 – #1 Johnson (Augsburg), #6 Bouressa (Concordia-Moorhead)
When the regions were drawn up last spring, some pointed to the West Region as one that may be lacking in strength compared to some of the others, and the 2013 season has proven that to be the case. St. John’s is the top ranked team, coming in at #18, but they are closely followed by #20 Augsburg and #21 Concordia-Moorhead. The Johnnies are a solid team led by #4 Hagan at 184, but he is their only top ten wrestler. Surrounding him in the lineup are solid contenders Willaert and Michaelis to give St. John’s a strong upper weight core. Augsburg is down a bit from the lofty heights that have seen them win ten NCAA championships in the past two decades, but they do have the nation’s top heavyweight in defending champ Chad Johnson. Mike Fuenffinger is solidly at #6 at 125 to give the Auggies nice bookends in the lineup. Concordia has 2011 All-American Bouressa at #6 at 285 along with a good top to bottom lineup.
125 and 285 are the only weights with multiple ranked wrestlers and 285 is the only weight with multiple returning All-Americans. Bouressa has only lost to Johnson in DIII this year and should join the defending champ in a return trip to the NCAA Championships. Johnson has not been too heavily challenged this year in DIII, except in that tight 3-2 match with Bouressa. Another wrestler to watch here is Nazar Kulchytskyy at 165. He was the champ at 157 last year and has put together a great season moving up a weight to lead the NCAA DIII Most Dominant standings and having the most falls in DIII. His teammate Schiferl at 174 should also be in the mix in Cedar Rapids after just missing the podium in 2012.
Concordia University Wisconsin also has a pair of talented athletes looking to make a mark. Ambrocio was a match away from placing last year at 125, while Sanders has put together a 33-3 season as he looks to prove he is more than just a backflip video. St. Olaf does not have any ranked wrestlers, but they have a few who are right on the precipice and will be in the mix to qualify for the tournament.
Ridiculous.. Absolutely ridiculous how these regions got made.. So disappointed.
wats ridiculous is that 6 top 125pounders are all competing for 3 spots out of the east region as well as the 157pound division as well.. #2bewak #4 frankel #5 rice #6 donaldson#15 rea & last but certainly not least is oboyle at # 20… 3 will go to the dance & 3 will sit at home watching guys from other regions who they have beat during the season quilify cause of this lame format.. i said this last yr wen i saw the realignment.. did the powers 2 b look at the geographical map?? 1/2 of theses teams that were placed in regions r not even close 2 the region they are going to… can u plz explain to me how elizabethtown which is near ursinus college is wrestling in a different region then the east region?? makes no sense at all.. thats just 1 of the many for instances that are across the board in all the regions
West Region Preview:
West Region Championship | Event Website
Augsburg College
Saturday March 2nd, 9:00AM
12 … http://t.co/8E2LgVy9Ad
This sickens me!
I wonder if the Augsburg administration had anything to do with this? …..Of coarse they did.
Speaking from experience as both an athlete and a coach under the previous NCAA DIII qualifier tournaments, the current format is far and away the fairest format for the student athlete. All the Regionals are now ran under the same qualification rules and numbers. You place in the top 3 you go to nationals period. It takes the politics out of the equation. Previously the number of athletes taken out of a qualifier was based on a formula. The formula factored in the number of qualifiers a region / conference had in the previous year along with how many of those qualifiers received All-American honors. This led to disparate qualifying numbers across different regions\conferences, some getting as little as 10 qualifiers while others getting as many as 33… In other words only the Champions would go to nationals in some qualifiers while the top 3 place winners would go in others. It was also very political because there were no hard and fast rules stating a given place winner had to qualify at a given weight class. Following every qualifying tournament coaches would get in a room. All the wrestlers who placed in the qualifying tournament would be put up on the board as potential qualifiers to nationals. Coaches would go through several rounds of voting to determine who would be taken to nationals. Most of the time this went according to placement in the tournament, but I witnessed instances where a highly ranked wrestler was taken over a lower ranking wrestle despite the higher ranking wrestler losing head to head to the lower ranking wrestler in the qualifying tournament. Coaches would be forced to form alliances to sway voting in-order to get their kids to nationals; especially for teams who are not a perennial power house. Athletes entered the tournament not knowing whether or not they would qualify because it was ultimately based on a vote. This voting also created an imbalance across weight classes at the national tournament. Depending on who got voted in from different qualifiers some weight classes might have 20 wrestlers while others would only have 12… 12 wrestlers for your national tournament???
“Strength” or “Depth” among regions is always going to rise and fall over time… Yes the Midwest did get an influx of highly ranked teams, but the Iowa Conference and Great Lakes Regional had been experiencing that for years prior… and some of the teams mentioned below have taken a big step up in just the last 2-3 years…
As an athlete no matter what opponents are in my bracket, no matter what the rankings say on paper… I know if I place in the top three I am going to the NCAA tournament…
As a sport we got a uniform qualifying system across all teams… we also gained 10 more athletes at the national tournament moving from 170 athletes to 180… see https://www.d3wrestle.com/?p=5102
I realize some very talented wrestlers will undoubtedly stay at home, but that is less about how the regions are made up and more about getting are total participation numbers up at Nationals…
so if you really want to help tell all of your friends and family to attend the NCAA Division III National Tournament… prove to them with record breaking attendance numbers that our sport deserves more than 180 athletes at the national tournament!!!
The new Regional reallocations are ridiculous! We all know who formatted them, and honestly it is a joke. If they were serious about this, they would of thought about weak Regionals, and allowed wild cards to be pulled from other weak regions to allocate to other stronger Regionals. The mideast, and West Regions have 7 combined weight classes without a ranked individual in it. The east doesn’t have one weight class without a ranked wrestler, and have serveral weight classes that will be leaving a stud home. I can’t help to think that after the last few years of teams from the East performance at the NCAA, that someone isn’t trying to eliminate some of the East Talent.
Isn’t ex-Augsburg coach Jeff Swenson now the NCAA Region rep?
You guys are making way to big of a deal out of this new qualifying system. Yes the Midwest is tough and yes the West is too easy. All they need to do to even everything up is take a few teams from the midwest and put them in the West and they have it perfect. All the Easterners complaining there are too many teams in there regional dont understand that its not about quantity its about quality. I think they did a great job balancing all the regions just put a few from the midwest to the west.
Eric, you’d have to break Iowa up. Is Iowa willing to do that?
This regional doesn’t look so “weak” if Augsburg, Concordia, and SJU are all ranked in the Top 10, which they are very capable of doing on a year to year basis. St Olaf is also improving, and on it’s way to being a Top 30 team. The other teams need to get their butts in gear.
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