Welsh-Ryan Arena will be packed this weekend — but not for a basketball game. Instead, some of the best wrestling programs in the country and thousands of their fans will descend on Evanston for the 2025 Big Ten Wrestling Championships, hosted by Northwestern for the first time since 2011. Here’s everything you need to know.
It’s tournament time
College wrestling has three types of meets: opens, duals and tournaments. Opens are usually early in the season, allowing coaches to test redshirting wrestlers or experiment with their roster.
Most of the season consists of dual meets, where two schools face off in ten head-to-head bouts, one for each weight class. The winner of each bout scores at least three team points, with bigger wins granting more team points. The school with higher team points at the end of ten matches wins.
At long last, the postseason is here. In the Big Ten Championships, all 14 wrestling programs send one competitor for each weight class. Each class has a tournament bracket. The goal for each wrestler is the championship bout, but if one loses along the way, they are sent to the consolation bracket, which determines placements for the top eight wrestlers in each division. Teams score points by winning bouts, and the team with the most points at the weekend’s conclusion wins the Big Ten Championships.
Wrestlers can qualify for the 2025 NCAA Championships in Philadelphia by placing in top spots, with the cutoff determined by the quality in that particular weight class. For example, the Big Ten has seven allocation spots for the 141-pound weight class, so the top seven 141-pounders at the Big Ten Championships will automatically qualify for the NCAA tournament. Weight classes with more than eight allocation spots have extra rounds to determine additional placements.
It doesn’t get much bigger than the Big Ten
The Big Ten boasts each of the last 17 NCAA champions, a record likely to be extended by either No. 1 Penn State or No. 2 Iowa. Nine of the conference’s programs are ranked in the National Wrestling Coaches Association’s Top 25, including five in the top seven.
Iowa and Penn State’s dominance has resulted in large fan bases — the schools boast the highest attendance numbers in the country, with Iowa drawing an average of 14,847 fans in 2023-24. The only two-day passes remaining on NU’s ticket website for this weekend are in the far-flung nosebleeds, and student tickets were not made available.
Hosts look to play spoilers
Led by coach Matt Storniolo, the Wildcats will host the championships after posting a middling 4-7 dual record this season, including a 2-6 record in the Big Ten gauntlet. Most of NU’s wrestlers will likely spend their weekend fighting through the consolation bracket for a spot in the national championships, but a few have the potential to pull off major upsets.
Redshirt junior and eighth-place finisher at the 2024 Big Ten Championships Evan Bates is a competitor to watch in a stacked 197-pound field, while No. 9 graduate student 157-pounder Trevor Chumbley is a bona fide contender in his weight class. Redshirt freshman No. 33 125-pounder Dedrick Navarro could also make a statement after upsetting No. 19 Blake West of Northern Illinois in his first dual of the season.
NU should improve upon its last-place finish at the 2024 Big Ten Championships. Bates, Chumbley and Navarro are joined by No. 18 redshirt senior 165-pounder Maxx Mayfield and No. 27 redshirt freshman 149-pounder Sam Cartella as the Wildcats’ ranked wrestlers, making for a more formidable team compared to last season, when the ’Cats went just 1-9 in the dual season.
Tournament pre-seeding will be announced Wednesday based on a consensus ranking from the Big Ten coaches and will be announced Wednesday. The top Wildcat wrestlers will likely be seeded around the No. 6 to No. 8 range. A No. 6 seed or lower has made it to a championship final in three of the last four years, though, so anything can happen in March.
When and how to watch
Saturday, March 8 (All times subject to change)
10 a.m. to 2 p.m.: First Round, Quarterfinals, Consolation First Round – Big Ten Network, Big Ten Plus
5 p.m. to 7 p.m.: Consolation Second Round, Consolation Third Round, extra bouts for national qualification – Big Ten Plus
7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Semifinals – Big Ten Network, Big Ten Plus
Sunday, March 9 (All times subject to change)
12 p.m. to 3 p.m.: Consolation Semifinals, Seventh-Place Matches, national qualifiers finals – Big Ten Plus
4:30 p.m.: Championship Finals (Big Ten Network); Third-Place, Fifth-Place Matches (Big Ten Plus)
Email: siddarthsivaraman2028@u.northwestern.edu
X: @sidvaraman
Related Stories:
— Wrestling: ’Cats fall flat in dual season finale at No. 3 Iowa
— Wrestling: Senior Night, Cysewski sendoff show brotherhood in win over Wisconsin
— Wrestling: Northwestern records its first conference win over Michigan State
