@GWUWrestling Set For 2016 NCAA Championships In New York
March 15, 2016 | Wrestling
NCAA Championships Guide | @GWUWrestling | @NCAAWrestling
NEW YORK – Gardner-Webb's three-man contingent will hit the mats Thursday to begin the 2016 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships at famed Madison Square Garden, the largest group to wrestle at the event for GWU since 2011.
Boyce Cornwell (Conyers, Ga. / Heritage HS), Austin Trott (Kingsland, Ga. / Camden County HS) and Chris Vassar (New Cumberland, Pa. / Cedar Cliff HS) will represent Gardner-Webb on the sports' biggest collegiate stage.
Doors open for the first round at 11:00 am Thursday, with wrestling to begin at Noon on eight different mats at "The World's Most Famous Arena." The early rounds will be televised by ESPN3 (WatchESPN.com).
Cornwell will make his first career appearance at the NCAA Championships, wrestling at 285 pounds. The redshirt junior earned an automatic bid by finishing third at the 2016 SoCon Championships – and taking one of the league's three allocations in the weight class.
Cornwell enters with a 22-9 overall record. He will begin Thursday against Iowa heavyweight Sam Stoll (22-5), who earned the No. 11 seed for the Championships.
Trott is no stranger to the big stage, having qualified for the NCAA Championships as a redshirt freshman in 2014. He posted a win in Oklahoma City, Okla., 24 months ago at 165 pounds and will use that experience as a redshirt junior.
Trott went undefeated against Southern Conference competition during the regular season and went 3-0 at the 2016 SoCon Championships to win the league's 165-pound automatic bid. He became Gardner-Webb's second Southern Conference champion since 2013, joining Hunter Gamble – who won the 174-pound weight class as a freshman.
Trott's first-round draw Thursday will provide a tall task – as he faces two-time national champion and undefeated Alex Dieringer (28-0) from Oklahoma State. Trott, who enters Thursday's action with a 17-5 mark himself, has won 10 of his last 11 matches – dating back to the Southern Scuffle in early January.
Trott went 3-1 against men who qualified for the NCAA Championship during that stretch.
Vassar earned the first at-large bid in Gardner-Webb's history last week and will be one of the first men on the mats Thursday when action begins. He will wrestle in a pigtail match at 149 pounds, taking on CSU Bakersfield's Coleman Hammond (21-13). The two did not wrestle during the two programs' dual match in November, with Hammond instead knocking off 2015 NCAA qualifier Ryan Mosley in an 8-2 decision that day.
Vassar wrestled very well during the second semester, going 18-7 overall and earned All-SoCon honors at 149 pounds. He finished second at the 2016 SoCon Championships, dropping a tough, 3-1 decision in the title bout.
The winner of the Vassar-Hammond pigtail will wrestle top seed and undefeated Zain Rutherford (29-0) of Penn State later Thursday.
Gardner-Webb, which finished its 2015-2016 season with school records for dual wins (9) and a SoCon Regular Season Co-Championship, has risen fast under fourth-year head coach Daniel Elliott – himself an NCAA qualifier for GWU in 2005 (St. Louis) and 2006 (Oklahoma City).
The Runnin' Bulldogs have qualified 24 wrestlers for the NCAA Division I Championships since 2003.
