The No. 12 North Carolina wrestling team (2-1) lost to the No. 10 Ohio State Buckeyes (1-0) 12-23 on Sunday at the Covelli Center in Ohio.
What happened?
The first match of the competition started out with the 165 weight class. Redshirt first-year Sonny Santiago faced off against Ohio State’s No. 10 Carson Kharchla. Santiago lost quickly as he was defeated 10-2 by the Buckeye sophomore.
The next weight class that faced off was at 174. The Tar Heel redshirt first-year No. 22 Gavin Kane, was defeated by Ohio State’s No. 6 Ethan Smith 16-10. These two matches were not the ways that the Tar Heels wanted to begin their game against a top ten team.
UNC graduate student No. 17 Clay Lautt, who weighs 174 pounds, fell to No. 17 Rock Jordan, 4-1. The following match, Mark Chaid struggled against Gavin Hoffman as he lost 14-3 in the major decision. In the heavy weight match, 285-pound senior Brandon Whitman, ranked at 33, battled closely against Tate Orndorff, but fell to the successful Buckeye heavy weight with a score of 2-0.
In the 125-weight division, first-year Spencer Moore was defeated 6-2 by OSU’s No. 15 Malik Heinselman.
UNC had their success towards the end of the day. The Tar Heels first individual victory as the 133-weight class wrestled. The redshirt senior, No. 13 Jaime Hernandez beat Dylan Kootz 5-3 to finally put the Heels on the board.
The biggest battle of the day was in the 141, when graduate student No. 14 Kizhan Clarke followed up Hernandez’s victory with a 3-1 victory of his own. The final match gave UNC more points with redshirt senior No. 2 Austin O’Connor pinning Jashon Hubbard at 3:44. O’Connor’s pin was the only pin of the day.
