What does Ohio State’s 133 pound wrestler Jordan Decatur have to do to qualify for the NCAA Championships?
Jordan Decatur started his college wrestling season off with a bang, burning his redshirt to fight then-No. 15 Josh Kramer of Arizona State. Decatur sprang the huge upset, and the Buckeyes looked like they had their answer at the 133 pound weight class.
Fast forward two months, and Decatur has gone 2-7 in Big Ten dual matches. Meanwhile, the win over Kramer doesn’t look as meaningful now, as the Sun Devil also lost his next seven matches.
Decatur is seeded 14th out of 14 wrestlers at the Big Ten Championships. Since the Big Ten only receives seven bids to the NCAA Championships at 133 pounds, Decatur will likely need to do the most work of any Buckeye to make it in.
Big Ten Wrestling Championships: 133 pounds
Basic Info:
Buckeye Wrestler: Jordan Decatur
Seed:No. 14
Place needed to qualify: 7th
133 pounds is the Big Ten’s second-weakest weight class, which is bad news for the lower-ranked wrestlers trying to get through to pick up a bid. Decatur will have to wrestle well above what he’s shown in Big Ten competition so far this year if he wants to earn a bid to the NCAA Championships.
Paths to the NCAAs
Winner’s Bracket
The simplest way to guarantee a seventh-place finish would be to reach the semifinals. All that means is winning your first two matches. Unfortunately for Decatur, that seems like a very unlikely path.
Decatur’s first-round opponent is No. 3 seed Austin DeSanto. The Buckeye faced DeSanto earlier in the season, and DeSanto won by a 15-point Tech Fall victory. If Decatur can turn that around and spring the upset, he should feel very confident about his second round match against Minnesota’s Boo Dryden or Nebraska’s Ridge Lovett. Decatur has never faced Dryden and lost a nail-biter against Lovett in January, but if he can beat DeSanto, he can take on either one of those.
Consolation Bracket
Assuming Decatur can’t take out DeSanto, what’s his path to seventh place? Well, it’s not a great one. He would face the Dryden-Lovett loser in his first Consolation Bracket match. If he wins that match, he will face the loser of the second-round match involving either Travis Piotrowski of Illinois, Sebastian Rivera of Northwestern, Travis Ford-Melton of Purdue, or King Sandoval of Maryland. Of those four, Decatur has only faced Piotrowski and Sandoval, and he lost to both of them. If Decatur can win that match, he will have to win one more match (against potentially anyone) in the next consolation round, or in the seventh-place match if he loses the next consolation round.
Decatur is in one of the tougher brackets, and he was the weakest of the Buckeyes in Big Ten play this season. It’s not impossible for him to earn a place in the NCAAs–he definitely has the talent for it–but it would involve him wrestling better than we’ve seen so far from him this season. And, well, no one should really be confident in a path to the NCAA Championships that involves beating either Rivera or Piotrowski.
Other Buckeyes in this series:
125 pounds: Malik Heinselman
157 pounds: Elijah Cleary
165 pounds: Ethan Smith
174 pounds: Kaleb Romero
184 pounds: Rocky Jordan
Heavyweight: Gary Traub
