At home on the floor of XFINITY Center, Maryland wrestling was unable to crown a champion in any Big 10 wrestling weight division.
But three wrestlers did clinch NCAA Championship auto bids, as Jaxon Smith, Braxton Brown and Ethen Miller each secured their spot at the end of the month.
Brown overcame a rough start in the main bracket, chaining together a string of dominant consolation bracket performances before finally finishing the tournament in sixth place.
Brown got through a round of the main bracket but couldn’t go further. After surviving his first bout against Indiana’s Cayden Rooks, he couldn’t make it out of overtime in his rematch against eventual 133-pound finalist Dylan Shawver from Rutgers, relegating Brown to the third place bracket.
Brown kicked off his comeback against Nicolar Rivera, Wisconsin’s 133-pound entrant. Brown pushed the match into overtime with his riding time advantage, and with less than a minute remaining, scrambled to a takedown.
Coach Alex Clemsen was fired up with the result.
“We’re watching [Brown] mature at a high rate,” Clemsen said. “He’s figuring it out. He’s finding out how to really fight.”
Brown followed that up with a 3-1 victory over Purdue’s Dustin Norris. But the winning ended there, as Penn State’s Aaron Nagao came back from a first period deficit and slammed the door on Brown 9-5. Brown then lost his fifth place fight in overtime against Iowa’s Brody Teske.
Smith’s favorable seeding gave him a short trip to the third place finals, but the vaunted 197-pound division in the Big 10 prevented him from going any further.
Smith, who had a first round bye, went to overtime with Rutgers’ John Poznanski in the second round on day one. His winning move was a duck under Poznanski’s flying arm at the edge of the mat and jumping on the Scarlet Knights wrestler’s back. That win immediately entered Smith into the 197-pound semifinals, where he found himself on the wrong end of an 8-2 decision against eventual second-place finisher Zach Glazier.
Smith wrestled his way into the third place fight with an 11-2 shutdown of Minnesota’s Garrett Joles. In the final bout, Smith was able to hang on with 2023 Big 10 champion Silas Allred until the third period. The Nebraska wrestler chained three takedowns together against Smith, and what started as a competitive affair ended as a 10-3 defeat.
Ethen Miller said Wednesday that he could see himself beating Michigan’s Austin Gomez and Nebraska’s Ridge Lovett en route to a Big 10 championship. His championship journey ended with Gomez.
Miller looked unstoppable through the first two matches, shutting out Purdue’s Marcos Polanco 5-0 and upsetting Iowa third-seed Caleb Rathjen 7-6, setting up a bout with Gomez. Miller led Gomez until giving up a takedown midway through the second period, which Miller could never make up the points for.
The third place bout went even worse for Miller — he couldn’t escape the first round before getting thrown to the mat on his back by Penn State’s Tyler Kasak, pinning him and ending the fight.
As a whole, Miller’s tournament showed his best wrestling of the year, but on Sunday night Clemsen hadn’t shaken the disappointment in the last bout.
“The last match just isn’t the best version of him, and I know he’s disappointed in that,” Clemsen said. “We were kind of a little lost and we never got back into it, and then we got power bombed.”
Kal Miller’s Big 10 Championships wasn’t a good one at the 141-pound weight class. He was a first round exit after giving up an 8-3 decision against Illinois’ Danny Pucino, and two bouts later he found himself in the 11th place bracket.
Miller had a second victory over Wisconsin’s Felix Lettini. But he then came up short in his final two fights, leaving him out of placement contention.
Chase Mielnik, representing Maryland at 184 pounds, bowed out of the championship bracket in the first round. He was relegated to the ninth place bracket immediately after.
“I just said ‘Finish this tournament right’,” Clemsen said. “He just kept battling and battling and battling and battling.”
Mielnik’s first match in the ninth place bracket was against Illinois’ Dylan Connell, who had bounced Mielnik out of the third place bracket with an 8-2 decision win. But Mielnik’s ninth-place bracket gauntlet saw a significant momentum shift, as he secured a 4-1 overtime victory over Connell in their rematch.
Mielnik turned in a convincing 10-3 decision victory against Northwestern’s Troy Fisher, punching his ticket to the ninth-place bout. Mielnik’s final bout was a win in the second period over Iowa’s Aidan Wiggins to secure the ninth place finish.
Wild card selections for the NCAA Championships for the wrestlers besides Smith, Brown and Ethen Miller will come out in the 11 days before the championships.
