PREVIEW: CCC Wrestling Championships Presented by U.S. Bank

2/14/2019 8:01:39 AM

GREAT FALLS, Mont. – The second-ever CCC Wrestling Championships, presented by U.S. Bank, are set to take place this weekend, with all nine CCC programs prepared to battle in Great Falls, Mont. In total, over 100 wrestlers will head east with hopes of earning a trip to the NAIA National Championships.

Tournament Central

The tournament will take place on the campus of the University of Providence, and will feature some of the NAIA’s best wrestlers. Coming from all over the western United States, Providence, Montana State-Northern, Eastern Oregon, Southern Oregon, Warner Pacific, Simpson, Menlo, Life Pacific, and Embry-Riddle (Ariz.) will all go head-to-head to determine who will advance to the NAIA National Championships.

Day one of the event (February 15) will feature head-to-head matchups up through the quarterfinal rounds, with day two (February 16) consisting of the tournament semifinals and placement matches.

The CCC will receive a total of 43 automatic qualifiers to the NAIA National Championships across all weight classes, based upon how many representatives of the conference were ranked in each weight class in the most-recent individual top-20 poll. The champion of each class will advance to the NAIA National Tournament, as well as the placements labeled below:

125 – 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, 6^th  
133 – 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th
141 – 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th
149 – 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th
157 – 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th
165 – 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th
174 – 2^nd
184 – 2^nd, 3^rd
197 – 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, 6^th
285 – 2^nd

In addition to the conference’s 43 automatic qualifiers, the CCC also possesses three ‘Wild Card’ selections, which allows the conference to send a trio of additional competitors to the national tournament who didn’t qualify via an automatic berth.

New to this year’s CCC Wrestling Championships are ‘true place matches,’ which will help determine the exact placing of individual wrestlers who finish in sequential order in a given weight class, but never actually competed directly against each other during the tournament. The true place matches will only be used in the event an automatic qualification is available, and they will not alter team points or team standings.

For example, in the 125-weight class, the CCC will have six automatic qualifiers to the NAIA National Tournament. If the seventh-place finisher never competed against the sixth-place finisher, a true place matchup will ensue to determine who advances. 

In the CCC’s inaugural tournament last year, Menlo and Southern Oregon shared the team championship. This year, the battle promises to be even fiercer, as six (No. 5 Embry-Riddle, No. 6 Menlo, No. 9 Montana State-Northern, No. 10 Providence, No. 18 Eastern Oregon, No. 20 Southern Oregon) of the CCC’s nine squads are ranked nationally in the NAIA Coaches’ Top-20 poll, and two of the conference’s programs (Simpson and Life Pacific) received votes in the rankings.

The CCC boasts more institutions in the top-20 than any other conference across the country, with Embry-Riddle, Menlo, Montana State-Northern, and Providence accounting for almost half of the NAIA’s top-10.

Live streaming, results, up-to-date brackets, and information on the teams involved is available here.

Qualifiers from this weekend’s event will earn the right to compete at the 62^nd Annual NAIA National Wrestling Championships in Des Moines, Iowa. The tournament will be held at the Richard O. Jacobson Exhibition Center on March 1-2.