Empire Conference Preview
Please Note: These are predictions of what will happen at a specific tournament on a specific date. They are not seedings or rankings. d3wrestle.com has seen all the results and made predictions based off those results. We may predict someone to win, even if he recently lost to a conference opponent, but that does not mean we did not see the results.
All week long, d3wrestle.com will be publishing previews of each of the NCAA qualifying tournaments to be held this weekend. In addition to predicting winners and identifying the top athletes at each weight, we will attempt to predict all 160 qualifiers based on the number of wildcards available for each qualifying tournament.
Empire Conference – 15 qualifiers – Saturday, February 20th at RIT
Predicted Team Champion – Ithaca
Top Individual – Blaine Woszczak, Ithaca 149
Returning NCAA Qualifiers: Jon Gregory (Ithaca 125), Chad Winowich (Ithaca 133), Blaine Woszczak (Ithaca 149), Willie Horwath (Ithaca 157), Chris Dahlheimer (Lycoming 165), Trent Zempel (Messiah 165, 2008), David Priest (Ithaca 174), Jason Wake (Oneonta 184), Joe Murphy (Cortland 285)
Ithaca is the cream of the crop here, but a balanced group of tough teams should be chasing the second spot. The conference seems to be on the upswing with 10 All Americans last year, but several weights still are up for grabs. Sterling of Cortland has a pair of wins over All-American Winowich, and Wade of Oneonta recently topped Priest and has been coming on strong. If the Empire can perform the way they did last year at the NCAA tournament, it will not be long before that number of qualifiers gets closer to 20 than the current 15.
Predicted Qualifiers in bold
125: Jon Gregory, Ithaca
Top Challengers: Tyler Marlow, Brockport; Sean Kempf, Cortland
133: Chad Winowich, Ithaca
Top Challengers: Aljamain Sterling, Cortland; Ed Galvin, Oneonta
141: Jeremy Stierly, Ithaca
Top Challengers: Marc Arcara, Cortland; Alex DeHart, Messiah
149: Blaine Woszczak, Ithaca
Top Challengers: Isaiah Britton, Lycoming; Stephen Perez, Cortland
157: Willie Horwath, Ithaca
Top Challengers: Kevin Sackett, Cortland; Tom Rispoli, Brockport
165: Chris Dahlheimer, Lycoming
Top Challengers: Trent Zempel, Messiah
174: David Priest, Ithaca
Top Challengers: Chris Wade, Oneonta; Mike Ciaburri, Cortland; Clay Nievert, Brockport
184: Luke Pariso, Brockport
Top Challengers: Jason Wake, Oneonta; Tim Stewart, Messiah
197: Carl Korpi, Cortland
Top Challengers: David Sbriscia, Ithaca
285: Joe Murphy, Cortland
Top Challengers: Joe Goetz, Ithaca; James Lamonica, Oneonta; Eric Leusch, Oswego