Ness, O'Connor Advance To NCAA Quarters

Thursday, March 21

Pittsburgh, Pa.

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North Carolina

NCAA Championships

Chip Ness stunned Penn State's Shakur Rasheed Thursday. (Larry Slater)

March 22, 2019 | Wrestling

NCAA Day One Brackets

PITTSBURGH --- Austin O'Connor and Chip Ness advanced to the quarterfinals to lead North Carolina on day one of the 2019 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships Thursday at PPG Paints Arena. Led by Ness and O'Connor, the Tar Heels scored 10.0 team points are tied for 17th place in the overall standings.

Both A.C. Headlee and Devin Kane won their first consolation matches and are alive in the wrestle backs, which will resume Friday.

O'Connor knocked off George Mason's Tejon Anthony in a 3-1 decision to start his day at 149 pounds and followed it up with a 4-1 win over Campbell's Josh Heil. Moving on to the round of eight, the sixth-seeded redshirt freshman will face third-seeded Mitch Finesilver of Duke for the chance to become an All-American. The two have faced each other four times this year, with Finesilver holding a 3-1 edge in the series.

Ness cruised to an 8-2 decision over Wyoming's Tate Samuelson to start his afternoon, but the fireworks emerged in his second match against second-seeded Shakur Rasheed of Penn State. Down 5-2 in the third period, Ness put Rasheed in danger, collecting a takedown and four near fall points to shock the crowd and go up 8-5 with less than 20 seconds to go. Ness held on and finished the upset to advance, handing Rasheed his first loss of the year in the process.

Ness, the No. 15 seed at 184 pounds, will battle 10th-seeded Sam Colbray of Iowa State in Friday's quarterfinals. Session three is set to begin at 11 a.m.

"These two are special," Scott said of O'Connor and Ness. "Austin is showing us that he's the real deal, and Chip is doing what Chip does in March. They both have the opportunity to be All-Americans and they're going to be ready. We get a chance to have two guys finish very high this weekend. They'll be ready when the lights turn on tomorrow."

Headlee dropped his first match of the day to Ohio's Cameron Kelly on a takedown with under 10 seconds to go, but rebounded nicely with a pin of Chattanooga's Chris Debien (4:02) in his first match in the consolation bracket. He'll begin Friday's action against Illinois' Michael Carr.

Kane won his pigtail match to start the day, pinning Indiana's Jake Covaciu in 4:32 for the first overall win of the year's tournament. After losing to Penn State's top-seeded Mark Hall, Kane rolled to a strong 8-2 decision over VMI's No. 17 Neal Richards. Kane will match up with Wisconsin's Ryan Christensen in his first match Friday morning.

Gary Wayne Harding, Josh McClure, Brandon Whitman and Cory Daniel each suffered a pair of losses on Thursday and were eliminated from the tournament.

Session three starts Friday at 11 a.m. with all mats streaming on ESPN.com and the ESPN app.