NCAA Div. III preview: Can Johnson & Wales snap the 24-year Wartburg or Augsburg winning streak?
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by Jon Gremmels, D3onthemat, Special to TheMat.com
Johnson & Wales celebrates its NCAA Northeast Regional title. Photo courtesy of Providence.jwuathletics.com
Twenty-five years ago, Lonnie Morris stood on the awards stand after earning All-America honors at the NCAA Division III Wrestling Championships.
“It went by pretty quick,” he said of the years between 1994 and 2019.
But Morris is keenly aware of something much more significant that happened that year in Division III.
“It also was the last time on of the ' 'Burgs' didn't win,” he said.
Every year since then, either Augsburg or Wartburg has won the national crown.
It almost happened that year, too.
It took a head-to-win win in the second-to-the-last match of the championships, for Ithaca to edge Wartburg 77.75-75 for the 1994 team title. Augsburg won its third team title the following year, then Wartburg earned its first crown in 1996 as the two Midwest powers began a string of 24 years with one or the other reigning as Division III champion.
It's a streak that Morris, now the coach at Johnson & Wales, believes has lasted much too long. He hopes he has the team to end the stranglehold the two Lutheran colleges have had on first place.
“It's something that has been on my mind for many years,” Morris said. “We have a team that can be competitive. Now, where we are, it's an exciting time.”
Just how exciting will be determined Friday and Saturday when 180 of the best nonscholarship wrestlers head to the Berglund Center in Roanoke, Virginia, for the national tournament.
“We feel we have a legitimate chance,” Morris, in his 22nd year at the helm of the Providence, R.I., school, said.
And why not?
Johnson & Wales defeated Wartburg 18-17 in the semifinals of the national duals in January, denying the Knights a spot in the finals for the first time in the meet's history. The Wildcats lost 20-13 to Augsburg in the National Duals finals, but Morris called the dual with Wartburg “a signature win.”
“It told us we can compete (with the best teams),” Morris said. “A couple of years back we beat Augsburg. This is the last team we'd never beat.”
Morris is the first to admit that duals and tournaments are much different, but he is taking the best team he ever has had to Roanoke.
“Without a doubt, just because of depth, this is the best team I've ever had,” he said. The key, he said, is that there are nine seniors in the program. “This team has stayed together,” he said.
There is talent up and down the lineup, starting with defending national champion Jay Albis, a senior, at 125 pounds. But the lineup also features All-Americans at 133 (senior Bobby Jordan), 141 (senior Joe Ferinde) and 184 (senior Khamri Thomas) and returning national qualifiers at 165 (senior Adrian Gonzalez) and 197 (junior Michael DiNardo). In all, nine Wildcats will compete.
“We all have our superstars,” Morris said of the top contending teams. “It's a matter of if the rest of them get it done.
“Without a doubt, we'll need to get bonus points. We have four pigtails, and that gives us a chance. But we'll need help from the rest of the field, too. We'll need to get Jay back (to the finals for a third consecutive year) and two or three guys to keep pace.”
Like Johnson & Wales, Augsburg also has nine national qualifiers. A pair of returning national champions and a national runner-up lead the Auggies in their quest for a 13th national title. Like Morris, Auggies Coach Jim Moulsoff expects a battle.
“Bonus points will be a big part of it,” Moulsoff said.
He knows just how important those points can be. The last time Augsburg won the team title (2015), bonus points were the difference in the 10 ½-point win over runner-up Wartburg.
“That was the key to our tournament success that year,” Moulsoff said. “In our regional (two weeks ago), I believe we were 19-3 the first day, and of those 19 wins, 16 came with bonus points.”
Augsburg also comes in energized. It was rolling through the a successful season when Wartburg traveled to Minneapolis and came away with a 16-15 victory, receiving the winning point on criteria for having more individual points after each team won five of the 10 matches.
“The situation of that dual was a reminder that every point is important, whether you're winning or losing,” Moulsoff said. “Especially going into nationals … it's a good opportunity to enforce that.”
The Auggies also have an abundance of national tournament experience.
Juniors Ryan Epps (157 pounds) and Lucas Jeske (165) won national titles a year ago, when the Auggies placed second behind Wartburg (136.5-82). They have a third finalist in senior Sam Bennyhoff – who avenged a loss in last year's national final to Warrburg's Brock Rathbun in the teams' dual meet.
Also back are 2018 All-Americans Alex Wilson (149), a senior, and Tanner Vassar (174), a junior, and 2017 All-Americans Victor Gliva (125) and David Flynn (141), both juniors..
“Sam, Ryan and Lucas have the experience from last year, but everyone else around them, they just want to contribute and be that guy.”
The next two teams with the most national qualifiers were the top two teams from the Lower Midwest Regional. Wartburg and Loras, head to Roanoke with seven qualifiers apiece.
Wartburg has dominated Division III recently, winning the title seven of the past eight years and 12 of the past 16. The Knights are led by 2018 national champions Rathbun and Cross Cannone. But this has been a rebuilding year for the Knights, who graduated five seniors last spring who combined for 11 top-eight finishes during their careers, including a pair of national titles and four runner-up finishes.
“This entire year has been a rebuilding year,” said Eric Keller, in his sixth season as Wartburg’s head coach after three years as Jim Miller’s co-head coach. “We had seven new guys. From where we were at the beginning of the year, it has been total growth.”
The Knights have only seven qualifiers this year, the fewest they have taken to nationals since 1992, Miller's first year. Wartburg has had nine or 10 qualifiers in every year with one exception (eight in 2001) since then.
That doesn’t lessen the expectations, however.
“We don’t want to take a step back,” Keller said. “The expectations we have on ourselves are higher than anyone else.”
The key for the Knights is to get contributions from everyone, including Cannone and Rathbun.
“Those guys have been the leaders for us all year,” Keller said.
Cannone has not lost since the national finals in 2017. He moved up from 141 to 149 last season and went to 157 this year, which included a win against Augsburg’s Epps in a battle of national champions.
“I have a workman’s mentality,” Cannone said after winning the Lower Midwest Regional title. “I’ve got to focus and get it done. I’m 61-0 (the past two years), but I try not to think about that.
“I trust the work that I put in. As long as I have that mentality, the sky is the limit.”
Rathbun won the title at 133 last year as a redshirt freshman after transferring from the University of Iowa. His regular season ended with back-to-back losses, including the 2018 finals rematch against Bennyhoff, but he got refocused in the regional meet and pinned his first three opponents in 24, 25 and 26 seconds, respectively, before avenging the other late-season loss in the regional final.
“Keeping my head where it needs to be (is the key),” Rathbun said. “I’m sticking with my same plan.”
With only seven qualifiers this weekend, Rathbun knows the Knights will have to score every point that is available to them.
“The big thing is to go out and get bonus points,” he said. “I did the same thing last year (he had a technical fall, a pin and a major decision on his way to the finals) and look where we ended up.
“But we’ve put that behind us.”
These days, the Knights see a hard-charging Loras program when they look behind themselves in the American Rivers Conference.
Coached by former Wartburg national champion – and Jim's son – T.J. Miller, Loras has closed the gap on Wartburg and is looking for the first top-five finish in school history.
“That’s the goal. We’ve never been in the top four,” the younger Miller said. “With seven qualifiers you can do a lot of damage.
“Every guy wants to be an All-American, too. Now is the time to put a tournament together in Roanoke, Virginia.”
The Duhawks are led by 2018 national runner-up Guy Patron at 197, 2017 All-American Clint Lembeck (141) and a third regional champion in Eddie Smith (165).
The lineup was bolstered in the fall when Brice Everson (133) – a junior from Camanche, Iowa, about an hour down the Mississippi River from the Loras campus in Dubuque, Iowa -- transferred from Wabash and over winter break when Jacob Krakow (174) transferred from Wartburg. And it was solidified late in the season when they decided on moving Kevin Kelly to 149 and using Lembeck at 141. Both had been ranked in the top 10 – one in each poll – at 141.
“You’re never sure how it will work out, but it did,” Miller said. “They were neck and neck, (but) Clint at 149 wasn’t doing well.”
Patron is hoping to take the final step this weekend after finishing second last year behind Wartburg’ Kyle Fank.
“I feel like I’ve been putting in the work,” Patron. “I feel like I’m where I need to be to get on top of the podium this year.”
He also is excited about the team’s chances.
“We’ve had a good year all year, and I think it’s going to be fun,” Patron said.
It won’t be easy cracking the top five, however.
Ithaca has four returning All-Americans from its team that took third place last year.
Defending champion Ben Brisman (141) leads the Bombers, who also have a two-time All-American in heavyweight Jake O'Brien and 2018 placewinners Jake Ashcraft (184) and Ferdinand Mase (125).
Stevens Institute of Technology brings back defending runner-up Brett Kaliner (149) and two-time third-place finisher Troy Stanich (141) from a team that finished fourth last winter.
Baldwin Wallace, Wabash and Wisconsin-Whitewater also enter the tournament with six qualifiers each.
There is plenty of talent returning, too, with eight of last year’s champions in the field. That list includes Mount Union's Jairod James at 174, and Waynesburg’s Jake Evans. Evans and 2018 runner-up James Bethel both are back at heavyweight but must contend with Augustana's Adarios Jones, who beat both of them in the 2017 nationals but was injured last year.
“It helps and it doesn’t,” Jones said of those 2017 matches that he won by 20-8 (Evans) and 9-3 (Bethel) scores on his way to a third-place finish. “It helps on the surface when I think, ‘Well, you know, I beat these guys, and I dominated them both.’ It helps from the unknown factor; I know what they both bring.”
Every weight typically is interesting in the Division III meet, where you never know what will happen. Last year, for instance, two No. 1 seeds were beaten in the first 30 minutes of the opening session.
One thing is for certain, though. There are 180 college wrestlers excited for the opportunity to compete at the Berglund Center.
One of them is senior Cam Timok of Central College in Iowa. Coming off an All-America finish in 2017, his season ended early last year because of an injury. But he is back this year and earned a trip to his home state (he’s from Glen Allen, Virginia) by winning the Lower Midwest Regional title at 125 pounds.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “It’s a dream come true to start and end in the same place. It’s about the end of the season. I’m peaking.”
It’s the sentiment shared by every wrestler and team in the field.
NCAA DIV. III CHAMPIONSHIPS
at Roanoke, Va.
Event Schedule
Friday, March 8
11:00 am: Session I: Preliminary Rounds one and two (6 mats, Consolation First Round (6 mats)
6:00 pm: Session II: Championship quarterfinals (3 mats), Consolation Second and Third Rounds (3 mats)
Saturday, March 9
10:00 am: Session III: Championship semifinals (2 mats) and Consolation quarterfinals quarterfinals (2 mats), Consolation semifinals (2 mats), Consolation place matches for 3rd, 5th and 7th (3 mats)
6:30 pm: Parade of All-Americans
7:00 pm: Session IV: Championship finals (1 mat)
Twenty-five years ago, Lonnie Morris stood on the awards stand after earning All-America honors at the NCAA Division III Wrestling Championships.
“It went by pretty quick,” he said of the years between 1994 and 2019.
But Morris is keenly aware of something much more significant that happened that year in Division III.
“It also was the last time on of the ' 'Burgs' didn't win,” he said.
Every year since then, either Augsburg or Wartburg has won the national crown.
It almost happened that year, too.
It took a head-to-win win in the second-to-the-last match of the championships, for Ithaca to edge Wartburg 77.75-75 for the 1994 team title. Augsburg won its third team title the following year, then Wartburg earned its first crown in 1996 as the two Midwest powers began a string of 24 years with one or the other reigning as Division III champion.
It's a streak that Morris, now the coach at Johnson & Wales, believes has lasted much too long. He hopes he has the team to end the stranglehold the two Lutheran colleges have had on first place.
“It's something that has been on my mind for many years,” Morris said. “We have a team that can be competitive. Now, where we are, it's an exciting time.”
Just how exciting will be determined Friday and Saturday when 180 of the best nonscholarship wrestlers head to the Berglund Center in Roanoke, Virginia, for the national tournament.
“We feel we have a legitimate chance,” Morris, in his 22nd year at the helm of the Providence, R.I., school, said.
And why not?
Johnson & Wales defeated Wartburg 18-17 in the semifinals of the national duals in January, denying the Knights a spot in the finals for the first time in the meet's history. The Wildcats lost 20-13 to Augsburg in the National Duals finals, but Morris called the dual with Wartburg “a signature win.”
“It told us we can compete (with the best teams),” Morris said. “A couple of years back we beat Augsburg. This is the last team we'd never beat.”
Morris is the first to admit that duals and tournaments are much different, but he is taking the best team he ever has had to Roanoke.
“Without a doubt, just because of depth, this is the best team I've ever had,” he said. The key, he said, is that there are nine seniors in the program. “This team has stayed together,” he said.
There is talent up and down the lineup, starting with defending national champion Jay Albis, a senior, at 125 pounds. But the lineup also features All-Americans at 133 (senior Bobby Jordan), 141 (senior Joe Ferinde) and 184 (senior Khamri Thomas) and returning national qualifiers at 165 (senior Adrian Gonzalez) and 197 (junior Michael DiNardo). In all, nine Wildcats will compete.
“We all have our superstars,” Morris said of the top contending teams. “It's a matter of if the rest of them get it done.
“Without a doubt, we'll need to get bonus points. We have four pigtails, and that gives us a chance. But we'll need help from the rest of the field, too. We'll need to get Jay back (to the finals for a third consecutive year) and two or three guys to keep pace.”
Like Johnson & Wales, Augsburg also has nine national qualifiers. A pair of returning national champions and a national runner-up lead the Auggies in their quest for a 13th national title. Like Morris, Auggies Coach Jim Moulsoff expects a battle.
“Bonus points will be a big part of it,” Moulsoff said.
He knows just how important those points can be. The last time Augsburg won the team title (2015), bonus points were the difference in the 10 ½-point win over runner-up Wartburg.
“That was the key to our tournament success that year,” Moulsoff said. “In our regional (two weeks ago), I believe we were 19-3 the first day, and of those 19 wins, 16 came with bonus points.”
Augsburg also comes in energized. It was rolling through the a successful season when Wartburg traveled to Minneapolis and came away with a 16-15 victory, receiving the winning point on criteria for having more individual points after each team won five of the 10 matches.
“The situation of that dual was a reminder that every point is important, whether you're winning or losing,” Moulsoff said. “Especially going into nationals … it's a good opportunity to enforce that.”
The Auggies also have an abundance of national tournament experience.
Juniors Ryan Epps (157 pounds) and Lucas Jeske (165) won national titles a year ago, when the Auggies placed second behind Wartburg (136.5-82). They have a third finalist in senior Sam Bennyhoff – who avenged a loss in last year's national final to Warrburg's Brock Rathbun in the teams' dual meet.
Also back are 2018 All-Americans Alex Wilson (149), a senior, and Tanner Vassar (174), a junior, and 2017 All-Americans Victor Gliva (125) and David Flynn (141), both juniors..
“Sam, Ryan and Lucas have the experience from last year, but everyone else around them, they just want to contribute and be that guy.”
The next two teams with the most national qualifiers were the top two teams from the Lower Midwest Regional. Wartburg and Loras, head to Roanoke with seven qualifiers apiece.
Wartburg has dominated Division III recently, winning the title seven of the past eight years and 12 of the past 16. The Knights are led by 2018 national champions Rathbun and Cross Cannone. But this has been a rebuilding year for the Knights, who graduated five seniors last spring who combined for 11 top-eight finishes during their careers, including a pair of national titles and four runner-up finishes.
“This entire year has been a rebuilding year,” said Eric Keller, in his sixth season as Wartburg’s head coach after three years as Jim Miller’s co-head coach. “We had seven new guys. From where we were at the beginning of the year, it has been total growth.”
The Knights have only seven qualifiers this year, the fewest they have taken to nationals since 1992, Miller's first year. Wartburg has had nine or 10 qualifiers in every year with one exception (eight in 2001) since then.
That doesn’t lessen the expectations, however.
“We don’t want to take a step back,” Keller said. “The expectations we have on ourselves are higher than anyone else.”
The key for the Knights is to get contributions from everyone, including Cannone and Rathbun.
“Those guys have been the leaders for us all year,” Keller said.
Cannone has not lost since the national finals in 2017. He moved up from 141 to 149 last season and went to 157 this year, which included a win against Augsburg’s Epps in a battle of national champions.
“I have a workman’s mentality,” Cannone said after winning the Lower Midwest Regional title. “I’ve got to focus and get it done. I’m 61-0 (the past two years), but I try not to think about that.
“I trust the work that I put in. As long as I have that mentality, the sky is the limit.”
Rathbun won the title at 133 last year as a redshirt freshman after transferring from the University of Iowa. His regular season ended with back-to-back losses, including the 2018 finals rematch against Bennyhoff, but he got refocused in the regional meet and pinned his first three opponents in 24, 25 and 26 seconds, respectively, before avenging the other late-season loss in the regional final.
“Keeping my head where it needs to be (is the key),” Rathbun said. “I’m sticking with my same plan.”
With only seven qualifiers this weekend, Rathbun knows the Knights will have to score every point that is available to them.
“The big thing is to go out and get bonus points,” he said. “I did the same thing last year (he had a technical fall, a pin and a major decision on his way to the finals) and look where we ended up.
“But we’ve put that behind us.”
These days, the Knights see a hard-charging Loras program when they look behind themselves in the American Rivers Conference.
Coached by former Wartburg national champion – and Jim's son – T.J. Miller, Loras has closed the gap on Wartburg and is looking for the first top-five finish in school history.
“That’s the goal. We’ve never been in the top four,” the younger Miller said. “With seven qualifiers you can do a lot of damage.
“Every guy wants to be an All-American, too. Now is the time to put a tournament together in Roanoke, Virginia.”
The Duhawks are led by 2018 national runner-up Guy Patron at 197, 2017 All-American Clint Lembeck (141) and a third regional champion in Eddie Smith (165).
The lineup was bolstered in the fall when Brice Everson (133) – a junior from Camanche, Iowa, about an hour down the Mississippi River from the Loras campus in Dubuque, Iowa -- transferred from Wabash and over winter break when Jacob Krakow (174) transferred from Wartburg. And it was solidified late in the season when they decided on moving Kevin Kelly to 149 and using Lembeck at 141. Both had been ranked in the top 10 – one in each poll – at 141.
“You’re never sure how it will work out, but it did,” Miller said. “They were neck and neck, (but) Clint at 149 wasn’t doing well.”
Patron is hoping to take the final step this weekend after finishing second last year behind Wartburg’ Kyle Fank.
“I feel like I’ve been putting in the work,” Patron. “I feel like I’m where I need to be to get on top of the podium this year.”
He also is excited about the team’s chances.
“We’ve had a good year all year, and I think it’s going to be fun,” Patron said.
It won’t be easy cracking the top five, however.
Ithaca has four returning All-Americans from its team that took third place last year.
Defending champion Ben Brisman (141) leads the Bombers, who also have a two-time All-American in heavyweight Jake O'Brien and 2018 placewinners Jake Ashcraft (184) and Ferdinand Mase (125).
Stevens Institute of Technology brings back defending runner-up Brett Kaliner (149) and two-time third-place finisher Troy Stanich (141) from a team that finished fourth last winter.
Baldwin Wallace, Wabash and Wisconsin-Whitewater also enter the tournament with six qualifiers each.
There is plenty of talent returning, too, with eight of last year’s champions in the field. That list includes Mount Union's Jairod James at 174, and Waynesburg’s Jake Evans. Evans and 2018 runner-up James Bethel both are back at heavyweight but must contend with Augustana's Adarios Jones, who beat both of them in the 2017 nationals but was injured last year.
“It helps and it doesn’t,” Jones said of those 2017 matches that he won by 20-8 (Evans) and 9-3 (Bethel) scores on his way to a third-place finish. “It helps on the surface when I think, ‘Well, you know, I beat these guys, and I dominated them both.’ It helps from the unknown factor; I know what they both bring.”
Every weight typically is interesting in the Division III meet, where you never know what will happen. Last year, for instance, two No. 1 seeds were beaten in the first 30 minutes of the opening session.
One thing is for certain, though. There are 180 college wrestlers excited for the opportunity to compete at the Berglund Center.
One of them is senior Cam Timok of Central College in Iowa. Coming off an All-America finish in 2017, his season ended early last year because of an injury. But he is back this year and earned a trip to his home state (he’s from Glen Allen, Virginia) by winning the Lower Midwest Regional title at 125 pounds.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “It’s a dream come true to start and end in the same place. It’s about the end of the season. I’m peaking.”
It’s the sentiment shared by every wrestler and team in the field.
NCAA DIV. III CHAMPIONSHIPS
at Roanoke, Va.
Event Schedule
Friday, March 8
11:00 am: Session I: Preliminary Rounds one and two (6 mats, Consolation First Round (6 mats)
6:00 pm: Session II: Championship quarterfinals (3 mats), Consolation Second and Third Rounds (3 mats)
Saturday, March 9
10:00 am: Session III: Championship semifinals (2 mats) and Consolation quarterfinals quarterfinals (2 mats), Consolation semifinals (2 mats), Consolation place matches for 3rd, 5th and 7th (3 mats)
6:30 pm: Parade of All-Americans
7:00 pm: Session IV: Championship finals (1 mat)
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