Tar Heels Score Top-20 Finish At NCAAs

Saturday, March 17

Cleveland, Ohio

All Day

North Carolina

NCAA Championships

March 17, 2018 | Wrestling

Final NCAA Brackets

CLEVELAND --- A fourth-place finish by redshirt senior Troy Heilmann and a seventh-place finish by redshirt junior Chip Ness capped the most successful national tournament for North Carolina in nearly 25 years Saturday at the 2018 NCAA Wrestling Championships at Quicken Loan Arena. The Tar Heels finished the competition with 27.0 team points, their most since 1996, and in 20th place, their highest finish since 1995.

Heilmann, who earned All-America honors by advancing to the semifinals at 149 pounds, beat No. 3 seed Grant Leeth of Missouri 5-3 Saturday morning to secure a top-4 finish before dropping a 3-2 decision to Matthew Kolodzik of Princeton in the third-place match. Heilmann concludes his final season as a Tar Heel with a 32-6 record, and his fourth-place finish matches the highest by a UNC competitor since Justin Harty took second at heavyweight in 1996.

Ness, who entered the tournament unseeded, beat three seeded foes at 184 pounds to take seventh place. His NCAA run culminated in an impressive 6-3 win over No. 9 seed Max Dean of Cornell Saturday for seventh. With Ness and Heilmann both finishing on the podium, Carolina has two All-Americans for the first time the 1994 and 1995 squads finished with four each.

Six of the eight Tar Heel qualifiers scored team points in Cleveland. True freshman Zach Sherman upset No. 15 seed Ali Naser of Arizona State on Friday at 133 pounds, redshirt freshman Kennedy Monday had three wins including an upset of No. 2 seed Joey Lavallee at 157, redshirt senior Ethan Ramos had a pair of victories at 174 and redshirt senior Danny Chaid knocked off No. 12 seed Stephen Loiseau of Drexel with a major decision on Thursday.