St. Louis – The three-day marathon known as the NCAA wrestling championships opened Thursday at Scottrade Center and Gophers coach J Robinson knows this is a grueling and tough race even the veteran teams.
The Gophers are in 11th place with 14 points and four in the quarterfinals after one day. Ohio State leads the tourney with 23 points followed by Iowa with 21.
"They wrestled well, they won some close matches and a lot of times at the NCAA everybody is excited for the first round because they think they can win," Robinson said. We're excited about how we're going to do."
Chris Dardanes (25-0) kept his record perfect with a 3-1 decision over Mackenzie McGuire of Kent State at 133 pounds in the evening session. He will meet Kevin Devoy (40-5) of Drexel on Friday morning.
Chris Mectate of Old Dominion downed Nick Dardanes (24-4) at 141 by a 9-4 decision. Dylan Ness won at 157 by a major decision of 11-3 over Chad Walsh of Rider. Ness improved to 30-2. He was a national runner-up a year ago for the second time in his career.
Logan Storley (29-6) defeated Zach Brunson of Illinois by a 3-0 decision at 174.
Scott Shiller downed Cody Crawford of Oregon State 10-1 at 197 to improve to 27-5. Michael Kroells lost a 5-2 decision to James Lawson of Penn State and fell to 25-15.
"They wrestled better tonight and Chris got it started going good and Nick was kind of a surprise on that one and Dylan and Story and Shiller came through so four of the five horses did what they were supposed to do," Robinson said. "We have got to build on it tomorrow. There are a lot of things that are going to happen."
