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As Tiger Five Looks To Make History, ESPN Set To Broadcast All NCAA Matches
March 18, 2015 | Wrestling
A program-record five Princeton wrestlers have made their way to St. Louis to compete in this week's NCAA Championships (Thursday-Saturday), and Tiger fans will be able to watch every match on the ESPN family of network.
ESPN will provide comprehensive coverage of the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships from the Scottrade Center in St. Louis from March 19-21. For the second consecutive year, all six sessions will be televised and every match carried on ESPN3 throughout the entire three-day competition.
ESPN will televise the semifinals (March 20) and finals (March 21) in prime time and ESPNU will televise the first, second (March 19) and quarterfinals (March 20), in addition to the medal round (March 21). ESPN3 will carry individual mat feeds throughout the entire tournament including the return of Off the Mat during the Championships finals. Additionally, for computer users, ESPN3 will once again offer multi-mat, simultaneous viewing which allows fans to watch up to four different mats at one time.
Both the television and ESPN3 content will be available on WatchESPN.
You can follow the tournaments for all five Princeton wrestlers (Abram Ayala, Brett Harner, Jordan Laster, Chris Perez, and Jonathan Schleifer) via Twitter through @tigerwrestling and @PUTigers_Live. GoPrincetonTigers.com will have full recaps following each session, and Perez will be a guest on Thursday's edition of TigerCast to discuss his incredible journey through multiple injuries and personal tragedy to both the EIWA finals and the 2015 NCAA Championships.
Below is a preview of all five Princeton competititors:
Juniors Abram Ayala (197) and Chris Perez (149) joined sophomore Jordan Laster (141) as automatic qualifiers during last weekend's EIWA Championships, when Princeton finished seventh as a team despite having only nine wrestlers in competition. Sophomore Brett Harner (184), who defaulted from the tournament due to injury, and freshman Jonathan Schleifer (165) earned at-large bids because of the quality of their regular season.
"I'm thrilled to be bringing a program-record five wrestlers to the NCAA Championships this year," Ayres said. "Our guys put in an incredible amount of work towards this goal, and they deserve to be going to St. Louis. I'm glad the selection committee recognized what our team sees in the room every day, that Jon and Brett are among the nation's best, and they earned the right to compete with the best.
"Now it's time to go back to work."
Ayala earned the seventh seed at 197, the highest a Princeton wrestler has been seeded since Greg Parker '03 was seeded second at 184 during the 2003 Championships. Ayala is the only one of the five to have NCAA Championships experience, as he qualified last year and won a consolation round match.
Here is more on Princeton's five NCAA qualifiers:
THE FIRST SHALL BE LASTER
Laster (26-12) will be the first to compete at 141 pounds, as he will take on local rival Chuck Zeisloft of Rider in a preliminary match, with the winner to take on top-seeded Logan Stieber of Ohio State. These two met during the final weekend of the regular season, with Laster earning a 5-4 road victory.
SIXTH SENSE
Perez (16-9) made the biggest jump of any Princeton wrestler at the EIWA Championships, as he moved from the sixth seed to the finals, where he fell to Cornell's Chris Villalonga (the fifth seed at the NCAAs). Along the way, he defeated both CJ Cobb and Cody Ruggirello, both of whom earned seeds at NCAAs. Perez is unseeded and will open his journey against eighth-seeded Alexander Richardson of Old Dominion.
FRESH FACE
Schleifer (26-11) had to sweat out the at-large announcements, but he will continue his historic season in St. Louis. After becoming the first Princeton wrestler to ever earn Ivy League Rookie of the Year honors, Schleifer will open his first NCAA Championships against third-seeded Isaac Jordan of Wisconsin; Jordan defeated Schleifer 7-2 at the Navy Classic. Schleifer is only the second Princeton freshman to qualify for the NCAA Championships in the last 35 years.
FOURTH TIME'S A CHARM?
Harner (28-7) injured himself late in the week before the EIWA Championships, and despite hoping to compete, he was forced to default as the third seed. A brilliant regular season, which included two February victories over returning All-Americas, earned him an at-large bid to his first NCAA Championships, and Ayres is confident he will be ready to compete. Harner is 28-4 against everybody in the NCAA not named Richard Robertson; care to guess which Wisconsin freshman Harner drew in the first round? Robertson is 26-8 and the 15th seed.
SEVENTH HEAVEN
Ayala has been ranked in the Top 15 throughout the season, but he has wrestled one of the toughest schedules in the nation and has one of the top RPIs at the weight. He was rewarded with the seventh seed and will open against Old Dominion's Kevin Beazley, who he defeated 7-5 in sudden victory at the Midlands Championships.
The group is just the third five-man Princeton squad to qualify for the NCAA Championships in the same year. In 1975, Dennis Underkoffler '76, Kevin Roesch '78, Randy Schutte '75, Bill Miron '78, and Mike Murburg '77 qualified. In 1978, when Princeton won its most recent EIWA Championship, the quintet of Roesch, Steve Grubman '78, John Sefter '78, Keith Ely '79 and Bill Hawley '80 qualified.