March 11, 2009
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- The NCAA announced the 52 at-large selections for the 2009 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships, including Old Dominion's Kyle Hutter (Mokena, Ill.). Hutter is one of five at-large selections at 133 lbs, filling out the bracket for the tournament held in St. Louis, March 19-20. He is one of five CAA wrestlers who received at-large bids, bringing the league total number of qualifiers to 25. ODU will send six, tying a program high set last year.
Hutter will join #6 James Nicholson (125 lbs), #3 Ryan Williams (141 lbs), #10 Chris Brown (165 lbs), #16 Jesse Strawn (197 lbs) and Eric Decker (174 lbs) at the NCAA Tournament next week.
The Monarch 133-pounder posted an overall record of 22-12 and a second place finish at last weeks CAA Tournament.
These wrestlers, listed in alphabetical order by weight class, join the other 278 student-athletes that qualified automatically through their conference and regional qualifying tournaments. The at-large selections were made by the NCAA Division I Wrestling Committee using the selection criteria without priority order, which consists of head-to-head competition, qualifying event placement, quality wins, results against common opponents, winning percentage, rating percentage index, coaches ranking and number of matches contested at that weight class.
A full video description of the entire selection protocol is available at http://web1.ncaa.org/web_video/newmedia/wrestling10-21.html or you can review appendix C of the 2009 Division I Wrestling Championships Handbook which is available at http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/champ_handbooks/wrestling/2009/1_wrestling_handbook.pdf .
The list of all 330 qualifiers is available at www.ncaa.com.