The AU wrestling team started its season by finishing sixth out of eight teams against top-level competition at the Brockport/Oklahoma Invitational Nov. 12 at The College at Brockport in N.Y.
Coming into the tournament, the Eagles were ranked No. 7 in the InterMat rankings.
AU was the highest ranked team from the tournament field that included No. 9 University of Maryland, No. 14 Rutgers University and No. 18 University of Oklahoma.
First-year coach Teague Moore came to the tournament short-handed as the Eagles were without the services of three of its four nationally-ranked wrestlers in the competition.
No. 2 Ryan Flores and No. 4 Ganbayar Sanjaa were preparing for next week’s All-Star Classic, while No. 8 Daniel Mitchell is being held out early in the season to get ready for upcoming events.
No. 7 Matt Mariacher was AU’s lone nationally ranked wrestler that competed in the tournament while Oklahoma, Rutgers and Maryland all boasted multiple ranked wrestlers.
Despite the missing wrestlers, the Eagles were led by four strong performances at the event.
Mariacher recorded the highest placement for the team with a second-place finish at 141 pounds. The redshirt senior won a 2-0 decision against Oklahoma’s Scott Chene and a 14-4 major decision over Devin Cook of Clarion University.
Mariacher then defeated Rutgers’ Anthony Perrotti 8-4 in the semifinals before losing a tough 5-0 decision to No. 9 Kendric Maple of Oklahoma.
Redshirt junior Thomas Barreiro stepped up and produced a strong third-place showing at 184 pounds. Beginning the tournament with an injury default victory over Maryland’s Alex Pagnotta, Barreiro lost a 13-8 decision to No. 19 Erich Schmidtke of Oklahoma.
But he bounced back to beat Army’s Will Brown 5-4, and in the consolation finals, Barreiro defeated Maryland’s Ty Snook 4-3 in the first tiebreaker.
Thomas Williams placed fourth for the Eagles at 125 pounds, opening up the tournament in style with two strong wins. He first defeated Brockport’s Rocco Rosso 6-0, and then recorded a 10-2 major decision against Army’s Scott Filbert.
After a tough 5-4 loss to Maryland’s Shane Gentry, Williams rebounded in strong fashion to knock off Army’s David White 11-0 and get to the consolation finals. Rutgers’ Vincent Dellefave then stopped Williams 1-0 in the consolation finals.
A final highlight came from Kevin Tao at 149 pounds, who placed fifth. Tao started off the tournament with strong 8-2 and 7-4 victories over Army’s Ryan Bilyeu and Oklahoma’s Justin DeAngelis, respectively.
Tao was then edged 3-2 by Rutgers’ Mario Mason and defeated 11-3 by Daniel Young of Army before beating DeAngelis once more for fifth place.
Oklahoma captured its 13th-straight Brockport Title by finishing with 182 points while Maryland came in second with 174.5 points.
The Eagles will next be in action Nov. 20 for the Keystone Classic at the University of Pennsylvania. AU finished third in the competition last year.
