{"id":58985,"date":"2021-03-08T11:17:10","date_gmt":"2021-03-08T17:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=58985"},"modified":"2021-03-08T11:17:12","modified_gmt":"2021-03-08T17:17:12","slug":"cooper-draws-no-5-seed-for-nationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=58985","title":{"rendered":"Cooper draws No. 5 seed for nationals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

INDIANAPOLIS – Fort Hays State senior wrestler A.J. Cooper<\/a> will be the No. 5 seed in the 285-pound bracket in this weekend’s (March 12-13) NCAA Division II Wrestling Championships, announced Friday (March 5) by the NCAA. Full brackets for all 10 weight classes can be found here<\/a>. This year’s national championships are being held inside America’s Convention Center Complex in St. Louis, Mo.

Cooper will open his run for a national title in the quarterfinals Friday afternoon as he was one of three wrestlers to receive a bye in the first round. He will face off with the winner of Cade Ridley (King) and Freddie Nixon (Gannon).

Cooper enters the national tournament with an 11-2 record this season, including five wins via pin. He earned his first trip to the national championships after finishing as the runner-up at the Super Region IV Championships last weekend. He has a chance to avenge both of this season’s losses, with Weston Hunt (Colorado School of Mines) and Jared Rennick (Drury) also qualifying for the national championships.

The Cimmaron, Kan. is a combined 9-5 all-time against the field in the national tournament, including bouts against eight of the other 12 wrestlers and wins over seven potential national opponents. Cooper is 1-0 against Ian Kuehl (McKendree), 1-0 against Cameron Coffman (Lander), 1-0 against No. 3 seed Tristen Weirich (Ashland), 1-0 against Steven Hajas (Augustana), 3-0 against No. 6 seed Lee Herrington (Nebraska-Kearney), 1-2 against No. 7 seed Weston Hunt (Colorado School of Mines), 1-0 against Ryan Monk (UNC Pembroke) and 0-3 against No. 1 seed Jared Rennick (Drury). Cooper has never wrestled either of his potential quarterfinal opponents.

Live streaming video will be available for free via NCAA.com<\/a>, with live results also available via TrackWrestling<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By FHSU SPORTS INFORMATION INDIANAPOLIS – Fort Hays State senior wrestler A.J. Cooper will be the No. 5 seed in the 285-pound bracket in this… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58986,"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-58985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","category-wrestling"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/AJCooper.jpg?fit=300%2C169&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58985","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=58985"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58987,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58985\/revisions\/58987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/58986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}