The Chattanooga wrestling team wrapped up day one of the NCAA Championships with three still alive in the back draw. The Mocs scored three wins on Thursday, led by senior Josh Condon’s first-round victory.
Condon opened with a 7-4 victory over Edinboro’s Johnny Greisheimer in the first round. The two traded takedowns and escapes in the first period, but Condon’s takedown with 27 seconds left, plus riding time, clinched the first win at the NCAA Championships in his career.
Condon went on to drop a hard-fought 4-2 decision to fourth-seeded Tyler Caldwell of Oklahoma State in the second round after Condon led 2-1 heading into the second period. He gave up an escape and a takedown in the second, though, which would prove to be the final margin. Condon will face Nebraska’s Austin Wilson in the next round.
Junior Alex Hudson battled Columbia’s fifth-seeded Steve Santos at 149. Hudson led 3-2 after the first period, and used an escape to go up 4-2 in the second. He took a 5-4 lead after a takedown and a penalty point, but Santos escaped late to knot things up at 5-5. Hudson had over a minute of riding time in the third period, but gave up a pin to Santos with less than a minute remaining in the match.
Senior Dean Pavlou also suffered an opening-round loss, suffering a 5-2 setback to Rutger’s Trevor Melde at 141, while sophomore Nick Soto gave up a major decision to Wyoming’s Tyler Cox (14-2) at 125. Senior Niko Brown closed out UTC’s first-round action with a 3-1 loss to ninth-seeded Jake Meredith of Arizona State.
Soto lost his second match in the wrestlebacks, giving up a second-period pin to Virginia Tech’s fifth-seeded Jarrod Gamett, while Pavlou suffered a 6-1 defeat to Missouri’s Nicholas Hucke. Hudson got the Mocs back on track, though, capturing a 10-5 victory over Iowa State’s Max Mayfield at 149.
Brown advanced to the second round of the back draw with his 9-5 win over Cornell’s Jace Bennett, and he’ll face seventh-seeded Nathan Schiedel of Binghamton in the next round.