{"id":44377,"date":"2019-03-10T23:46:07","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T04:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=44377"},"modified":"2019-03-10T23:46:42","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T04:46:42","slug":"ball-fourth-at-ncaa-dii-wrestling-championships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=44377","title":{"rendered":"Ball fourth at NCAA DII wrestling championships"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By FHSU SPORTS INFORMATION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

CLEVELAND, Ohio – No. 10 ranked Fort Hays State wrestling completed the 2018-2019 season at the NCAA Division II Championships on Saturday (Mar. 9). The Tigers had one wrestler qualify for nationals in Brandon Ball<\/a>. He was the No. 1 ranked wrestler in the 141-pound weight class entering the tournament. The junior earned a fourth-place finish en route to his second All-America honor as a Tiger; both honors at 141 pounds.

No. 1 ranked Brandon Ball<\/a> began the second day of competition in the semifinal match against No. 4 ranked Isaiah Royal of Newberry College. The bout started with both wrestlers on their feet and stayed that way until Royal earned a takedown near the end of the period. Ball was able to maneuver himself out of the hold and cut the lead in half. Ball trailed Royal 2-1 after the opening frame. In the second period, Ball was on top and held Royal in his grasp for the whole period, earning 2:00 of riding time. As the third frame began, Ball was able to escape Royal’s grasp in the opening seconds and held on to 1:57 of his riding time, tying the match 2-2. The bout was coming to a close before Royal earned another takedown, taking the lead back to 4-2. Ball escaped and was awarded one point for at least one minute of riding time, sending the bout to overtime with a score of 4-4. In the first overtime period, Royal earned a quick takedown to take the match, 6-4.

Ball fell to the back side of the 141-pound weight class bracket and earned a second match against No. ranked Joey Alessandro of Pitt-Johnstown in the consolation semifinals. Ball defeated Alessandro when the two met earlier in the season with a narrow 4-3 decision at the National Duals (Jan. 4) in Louisville, Ky. This bout featured the top two ranked individuals in their weight class, whereas the previous meeting Ball was No. 2 and Alessandro was No. 3 in the nation. This time, Ball earned a reversal in the second period and never looked back on his way to a 7-3 decision. Ball is now 3-0 against Alessandro in his collegiate career.

In the consolation championship, Ball faced off with No. 7 ranked Eduardo Penha of Colorado Mesa for the second time this season. Ball got the better of Penha in the first matchup as he earned a 6-2 decision at the Midwest Duals (Jan. 19) in Kearney, Neb. This time, however, Ball and Penha were locked in to a scoreless battle until the third period when Ball earned an escape early in the frame. Penha grabbed a takedown in the closing seconds and lead 2-1 before Ball, once again, earned a ride time point. Ball’s second overtime match of the day was almost a carbon copy of the first OT match when he was taken down in 31 seconds, falling to Penha by a score of 4-2.

With this fourth-place finish, Ball became the 25th Tiger to become at least a two-time All-American after earning a sixth-place finish at the 2017 NCAA DII Championships as a redshirt-freshman. Brandon Ball<\/a> now has a 115-21 overall record, a .846 winning percentage. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By FHSU SPORTS INFORMATION CLEVELAND, Ohio – No. 10 ranked Fort Hays State wrestling completed the 2018-2019 season at the NCAA Division II Championships on… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7349,784],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","category-wrestling"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44377"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44378,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44377\/revisions\/44378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}