Superlatives: NC State wrestling at the NCAA Championships

A superlatives look back at NC State wrestling's performance at this weekend's NCAA Championships in St. Louis, where the Wolfpack placed sixth as a team with a school-record-tying four All-Americans.

There was no other choice for this award — redshirt sophomore Trent Hidlay was the only Wolfpack wrestler to make the NCAA finals, and he did it in dominant fashion.

Entering as the No. 2 seed at his weight, he opened his tournament with a pair of technical fall victories, earning the Pack crucial bonus points in the team standings, before close wins in the quarterfinals (3-1) and semifinals (2-1 in overtime).

Although Hidlay came out on the wrong end of a one-point match in the finals, it was still an outstanding tournament, which was his first chance at the NCAA Championships after last year's event was canceled.

Hidlay tied for the second-highest-placing grappler from the ACC with two others, and because of his bonus-point wins nearly scored as many team points at the event as UNC national champion Austin O'Connor, the league's only competitor to score more for his squad than Hidlay.

Fifth-year senior 141-pounder Tariq Wilson also enjoyed a dominant run fueled by bonus-point victories. He actually scored enough bonus points throughout the tourney that he tallied more (17) for his team than NCAA finalist Jake Wentzel of Pitt (16), for example.

Wilson entered as the No. 4 seed, and his best bonus-point win came in his final match of the event, an impressive 15-5 major decision over No. 3 Sebastian Rivera (Rutgers) to claim third place.

Several in the wrestling world actually picked Rivera to win the weight class, but Wilson dominated this matchup from the beginning, picking up an early takedown, four near-fall points after the incredible follow to Rivera's gramby roll attempt seen below and over 2:30 of riding time — all in the first period.

Wilson coasted from there to a 10-point victory to finish third at the NCAA Championships for the second time in his career. He is one of just four Wolfpackers with multiple top-three NCAA placements in his career (two), and only got to wrestle at the event three times.

Much like sometimes a running back can have an impressive four-yard run where there was a defender in the backfield that he made miss and then another at the line of scrimmage before picking up a few yards on a play that could've easily gone for a loss, the two points for a takedown don't come much harder than this:

Hidlay first shoots about 1.5 seconds into the fifth-place match, then goes to three different moves before impressively lifting his opponent off the mat with a single leg and finally finishing about 23 seconds after his initial shot. "Chain wrestling" is stringing multiple moves together after an opponent stymies the initial attack, and it's hard to find a much better example of doing that than this clip of Hidlay. He'd go on to win this fifth-place match via an 11-2 major decision.

Every defeat in what's called the blood round is heart-breaking — the winner claims All-America honors, while the loser is eliminated one win shy of the prestigious honor.

125-pound redshirt sophomore Jakob Camacho was the only Wolfpacker to fall in the blood round this year, and did it in especially gut-wrenching fashion — taking his opponent all the way to the second tiebreaker (essentially quadruple overtime) before falling by one point.

Camacho proved several times to be right there with eventual All-Americans this year, but was not able to get it done in St. Louis. He lost by two points in the quarterfinals to the eventual second-place finish and then by one in the blood round, to the eventual seventh-place finisher.

He also had a pair of close matches prior to the event with sixth-place finisher Sam Latona of Virginia Tech.

There were quite a few candidates here — from stalling calls in a few bouts, most notably two against Trent Hidlay in the NCAA finals, to Hidlay's opponent in an eventual one-point loss in the gold medal bout grabbing the edge of the mat, which should have resulted in a penalty point.

Both of the aforementioned ones created quite a bit of conversation within the wrestling community, and there's even another would've sent shockwaves through St. Louis.

In the first round of action, fifth-year senior 197-pounder Nick Reenan, who entered the event seeded No. 28, surprised No. 5 Jacob Warner of Iowa with a headlock early in the first period. At one point, it appeared like Reenan had Warner pinned, which probably would've stood as one of the most surprising upsets in the entire tournament.

However, the referee never called a pin, and Reenan went on to lose in overtime (with stalling calls playing a major factor in the final result).

It was made all the tougher, when in a later match, again between NC State and Iowa (Tariq Wilson's semifinal), another controversial pin call happened — again in Iowa's favor — though this time it was the ref slapping the mat to indicate Wilson was pinned with one second left in the first period.

Even those with no ties to NC State were noting that all the breaks seemed to go against the Pack in St. Louis (Justin Basch is a wrestling podcaster, James Green is a former Nebraska All-American that now trains at Virginia Tech and Bo Nickal was a three-time national champion for Penn State):

One of the things to watch in any postseason wrestling tournament is "revenge" matches — without fail, somebody is going to reverse a regular-season loss with a win when it counts the most.

There were two NC State revenge wins in the tournament:

• 165-pounder Thomas Bullard in round one — beat Will Formato (App State) by 3-2 decision … Bullard lost to Formato in his season debut this year, 4-0.

• 141-pounder Tariq Wilson in the consolation semifinals — beat Chad Red (Nebraska) by 12-1 major decision … Wilson was pinned by Red in the 2019-20 season in 33 seconds.

Overall record in individual matches: 24-16

Bonus-point wins: 12

• 1 pin (Hayden Hidlay)

• 4 technical falls (2 by Trent Hidlay, 1 each by Hayden Hidlay and Tariq Wilson)

• 6 major decisions (2 each by Tariq Wilson and Hayden Hidlay, 1 each by Jakob Camacho and Thomas Bullard)

• 1 medical forfeit (Daniel Bullard)

NC State's five wins by fall or technical fall tied for fourth most at the event.

Record in matches decided by two points or less: 6-7

Record in overtime matches: 1-2 (one win by Trent Hidlay, one loss each by Camacho and Nick Reenan)

Top three individuals in team points scored:

1. Trent Hilday - 19 (ranked 19th overall)

2. Tariq Wilson - 17 (tied for fifth most among non-finalists)

3. Hayden Hidlay - 15.5

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