Ness, like U, comes up short

ST. LOUIS - With their worst team finish at the NCAA championships since 1996 all but assured, the Gophers wrestling team turned to its one constant Saturday night in hope that sophomore Jayson Ness could wrap up a forgettable season with an unforgettable bow.

Minnesota fans at Scottrade Center, with similar hopes, chanted his name well before his 125-pound championship match began; five of them spelled out "N-E-S-S-!" on painted chests.

Instead, a 10-3 loss to Indiana's top-seeded Angel Escobedo provided a disappointing yet appropriate conclusion to a Gophers season that started with hopes of a repeat NCAA team title and ended in 10th place with 61.5 points -- a sum that was barely more than half of champion Iowa's 117.5.

Gophers assistant Joe Russell, echoing the sentiments of other coaches and wrestlers, said after Ness' match, "I just wanted that one win."

Ness, the No. 2 seed and the Gophers' only wrestler in a title match, finished the season 39-2 -- with both losses coming to Escobedo, in the Big Ten final and NCAA final. Ness, whose 20 pins tied the team record held by Gophers assistant coach Marty Morgan -- a fellow Bloomington Kennedy graduate -- said disappointment should eventually give way to pride in a standout season. On Saturday night, however, there was little consolation.

"All the work was to be in the first-place stand," said Ness, who took fifth as a freshman.

The match was much closer than the final score indicated. Tied at 2-2 in the second period, Ness was in on a single-leg -- the type of shot he normally finishes. But Escobedo wriggled away without giving up a takedown, serving perhaps as the turning point. An escape and a takedown pushed Escobedo ahead 5-2 in the third. Ness escaped, but a desperation attempt at a takedown near the end left Ness vulnerable to another takedown and back points as time expired.

Ness and Mack Reiter (fifth at 133) were the only Gophers out of seven to place at or above their tournament seed. They kept each other loose as roommates at the tournament.

"He probably wouldn't want me telling you this, but he bought one of those Sudoku puzzle books on the way down here," Reiter said Saturday afternoon. "He's done 92 puzzles since we got here."

Reiter followed with the word "nerd" but also said this: "He's the epitome of how our coaches want guys to wrestle."

This year's lineup featured six seniors, including Reiter (a three-time all-America) and Manuel Rivera (141), who earned a pin in his seventh-place match Saturday and finished as an All-America for the first time. Ness and junior Dustin Schlatter -- who took seventh at 149 pounds -- will return as All-Americas to anchor a young team next year.

"I've lived with him for the past three years, and he just loves to wrestle, loves to work out," Schlatter said of Ness, who was a redshirt when Schlatter won an NCAA title as a true freshman. "He's a wrestling fanatic."

Head coach J Robinson, who used the words "frustrating" and "disappointing" to summarize the season, will head to Hawaii soon with his wife, who is training for a triathlon.

"We'll have a whole new group of guys, and when you have that you can change some things around," Robinson said. "We'll wake up [today] already starting to think about next year."

And ready to forget about this one.

• Total attendance for the three-day, six-session tournament was 94,190.