SPARTANBURG, S.C. – The NCAA announced the brackets for the 2023 NCAA Championships on Wednesday, revealing the seeding and opponents for the 15 Southern Conference wrestlers who will travel to BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on March 16-18. The SoCon will see 15 wrestlers from four of the nine SoCon schools, with three featured at 184, two at 133, 165 and 174, and one wrestler at 125, 141, 149, 157, 197 and heavyweight, compete for an NCAA title.
App State’s Caleb Smith will be the No. 5 seed at 125 pounds, 20 spots ahead of his position at last year’s tournament, and will face No. 28 Killian Cardinale of West Virginia. Smith will go into the NCAA Championships as the highest-seeded SoCon wrestler in his respective weight class.
At 133 pounds, Chattanooga’s Brayden Palmer, the 2023 SoCon Tournament’s Most Outstanding Wrestler, is the No. 18 seed in his weight class and will face 15th-seeded Iowa State wrestler Zach Redding. Campbell wrestler Domenic Zaccone, the No. 20 seed at 133 pounds, will take on No. 13 Chris Cannon of Northwestern.
Campbell’s Shannon Hanna is the No. 27 seed at 141 pounds and will face No. 6 Beau Bartlett of Penn State. Hanna was the No. 22 seed during the 2022 NCAA Championship. App State’s Jon Jon Millner, the 2023 SoCon Wrestler of the Year, is the No. 9 seed at 149 pounds and will face No. 24 Victor Voinovich of Oklahoma State. App State’s Tommy Askey, the No. 24 seed at 157 pounds, will face Michigan wrestler Will Lewan, who is the No. 9 seed in his weight class.
At 165 pounds, Gardner-Webb’s RJ Mosley, the No. 24 seed, faces No. 9 Shane Griffith of Stanford. App State’s Will Formato earned an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament and will be the No. 27 seed at 165 pounds, facing No. 6 Patrick Kennedy of Iowa in the first round.
Chattanooga wrestler Rocky Jordan is the No. 10 seed at 174 pounds and will take on No. 23 Mickey O’Malley of Drexel. App State’s Will Miller is the No. 32 seed and will face No. 33 John Worthing of Clarion, with the winner taking on No. 1 Carter Starocci of Penn State.
Caleb Hopkins of Campbell is the No. 27 seed at 184 pounds and will face No. 6 Kaleb Romero of Ohio State. Chattanooga’s Matthew Waddell and Gardner-Webb’s Jha'Quan Anderson are the No. 30 and No. 32 seeds, respectively, at 184 pounds. Waddell will face Penn State wrestler Aaron Brooks, the No. 3 seed, while Anderson faces No. 33 Anthony Carman of West Virginia as the winner of that contest will take on No. 1 Parker Keckeisen of Northern Iowa.
Two more Camels round out the field for the SoCon with Levi Hopkins coming in as the No. 24 seed at 197 pounds and will take on No. 9 Max Dean of Penn State, while Taye Ghadiali, the No. 17 seed in the heavyweight division, will face No. 16 Tate Orndorff of Ohio State.
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here for the NCAA’s official brackets.
Individual champions/NCAA qualifiers
125 – Caleb Smith, App State
133 – Brayden Palmer, Chattanooga
141 – Shannon Hanna, Campbell
149 – Jon Jon Millner, App State
157 – Tommy Askey, App State
165 – RJ Mosley, Gardner-Webb
174 – Rocky Jordan Chattanooga
184 – Caleb Hopkins, Campbell
197 – Levi Hopkins, Campbell
HWT – Taye Ghadiali, Campbell
Additional NCAA allocations
133 – Domenic Zaccone, Campbell
174 – Will Miller, App State
At-large NCAA selections
165 – Will Formato, App State
184 – Jha'Quan Anderson, Gardner-Webb
184 – Matthew Waddell, Chattanooga