Illinois Fighting Illini Wrestling finished sixth at the Big Ten Championships this past weekend, headlined by Kannon Webster’s third-place showing at 157lb.
Eight Fighting Illini qualified for next week’s NCAA Championships, but the biggest news around the Illini program was the unfortunate end of reigning national champ Lucas Byrd’s 29-match winning streak. The defeat came in the 133lb quarterfinals to Purdue’s 10th seeded Blake Boarman and was the biggest seed upset of the weekend. Byrd nevertheless
defeated Boarman in their rematch for 5th place after losing to Iowa’s Drake Ayala, but his path to repeating as national champion will be more difficult than last year’s.
Spencer Moore won the 9th place match at 125lb to snag the very last automatic qualifying berth for the NCAA championships. Braeden Scoles clinched a berth at 165 after taking a medical forfeit in the 7th place match, while two wins in the championship bracket at 149 put Michael Gioffre in the NCAA’s at 6th. Heavyweight Luke Luffman and 174lb Colin Kelly finished 8th and 7th respectively, which qualified them for nationals.
The final two qualifiers were Chris Moore at 184lb and Webster at 157lb, both of whom wrestled for third place in their respective class. Moore lost an overtime heartbreaker, while Webster scored a decisive win over Ohio State’s Brandon Cannon to secure not only third place but a claim to being the best piece of artillery in his weight class.
Illinois finished with 78 points in a departure from their triple-digit showing a year ago. They did however beat former stalwart Minnesota in a down year for the Gophers. They were solidly in the third tier of teams with Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota, well behind tier 2 (Nebraska and Ohio State) and lightyears behind Penn State like everyone else. The Nittany Lions are once again the prohibitive favorite to win the NCAA title.
