OSU Press Release
STILLWATER – The NCAA announced the pre-allocations and first coaches ranking for the 2021 NCAA Wrestling Championships on Thursday, showing how many automatic qualifying spots each conference is projected to receive.
The weight class conference champion in each qualifying tournament will earn an automatic qualifier to the national championships. Each conference was awarded additional pre-allocations based on the five-year average (2016-20) earned by the conference in each weight class.
After the conference tournaments have concluded, the Division I Wrestling Committee will meet in-person to select the remaining at-large qualifiers to fill out the 33-man bracket in each weight class, which will be announced March 9. Brackets and seeding will be announced on NCAA.com at 6 p.m. on March 10.
In total, the Big 12 Conference received 45 qualifying spots for the NCAA Championships, which takes place in St. Louis, Missouri from March 18-20. The 10 automatic qualifiers for winning the Big 12 Championship will be joined by four additional qualifiers at 125, 133, 149, 165, 197 and 285; three additional qualifiers at 141, 174 and 184; and two additional qualifiers at 157 pounds.
Nine OSU wrestlers were included in the first coaches ranking, led by No. 4 Boo Lewallen and No. 4 Travis Wittlake. Daton Fix was not included in the initial rankings due to a lack of matches, but is the consensus No. 1 133-pound wrestler among other polls, He will make his season debut on Sunday in the Cowboy Challenge Tournament.
Below you can find the full where the Cowboys are slotted in the first coaches rankings. The full list can be found at this link.
125: No. 15 Trevor Mastrogiovanni
141: No. 24 Dusty Hone
149: No. 4 Boo Lewallen
157: No. 13 Wyatt Sheets
165: No. 4 Travis Wittlake
174: No. 11 Dustin Plott
184: No. 6 Dakota Geer
197: No. 13 AJ Ferrari
285: No. 25 Austin Harris