James Hackney
Mizzou had an up and down dual season, but finished with a big win over favorites Iowa State. Coming into the Big 12 tournament the team has all ten wrestlers seeded, and are the favorites on paper. Eight of those seeds are in the top four, with Brown and Hart at 5 and 6 respectively. The team has looked good at the Tiger Style Invite and the Scuffle this year, but will need to wrestle their best if they want to win their 12th conference title.
As it is currently seeded, Mizzou would be in first with 108 points. That only includes placement points and not advancement or bonus point wins. The team is projected to have ten qualifiers if seeds held, with Brown and Hawks in the very last spots of their weight. Byes were randomly drawn in, and Mizzou has eight first round matches. For the team that means there are eight opportunities to score bonus points and build an early lead. They have a 24 point projected lead over OK State in second, but they and ISU are going to be looking for bonus and upsets themselves to catch up.
Brackets can be found here. I created an interactive bracket that you can download and fill out here. Of note, the interactive bracket only scores placement points as well.
125lbs: #13 Noah Surtin (13-4) – 3 Seed (6 Automatic Qualifiers)
Last year Surtin had a rough Big 12’s and finished seventh after being seeded fifth and ended up needing an At-Large for the tournament. Surtin is surely looking to improve on that result, and has the path to do that. First round he’ll see NDSU’s Ryan Henningson, who is 5-26 in his career and 2-9 this year….
