Takedown Report

‘It Was a Big Risk’: Teague Travis Qualifies for NCAA Championships with Fourth-Place Finish at Big 12s

‘I had to go out here, and I had to go place top four and get a bid.’
TULSA — Coming into the weekend, Teague Travis hadn’t had a wrestling match since mid-November, but now he is headed to the NCAA Championships.
Travis on Sunday beat South Dakota State’s Avery Allen in the consolations of the 149-pound bracket at the Big 12 Championships. That win secured Travis a top-four finish in the tournament and an automatic bid into the NCAA Championships later this month. Travis finished fourth in Tulsa after dropping the third-place match to North Dakota State’s Gavin Drexler.
Travis suffered a knee injury during his second match of the year. The plan from there was, at least momentarily, for Travis to get a medical redshirt and try again next season. Only having two matches coming into the weekend, there was an abnormal amount of pressure for Travis to get an automatic bid because he didn’t have enough matches to get an at-large bid. So, had this weekend gone wrong, Travis would’ve lost an entire season.
“It feels really good to kind of get that pressure off because it was a big risk,” Travis said. “I could lose a whole year and be like, ‘Well, that was stupid.’ Now it’s just focusing on (the NCAA Championships) because that’s the end goal. This tournament, I didn’t have really a lot of room for error, a lot of room to kind of experiment because this is the first time getting down to weight, making weight, wrestling a two-day tournament.
“There’s a lot of excuses I could’ve had, but I didn’t really have time to focus on all the things that could go wrong. I had to go out here, and I had to go place top four and get a bid.” |
Another wrinkle in Travis’ story is that 149 pounds wasn’t where he wrestled to start the year. Travis was the Cowboys’ starter at 157 coming into the season, the same weight he manned last season. After his injury, Caleb Fish burned his redshirt to jump into the Cowboys’ lineup for the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational in early December and has performed well.  … more at … https://pistolsfiringblog.com/it-was-a-big-risk-teague-travis-qualifies-for-ncaa-championships-with-fourth-place-finish-at-big-12s/

March 12, 2025 - Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized | ncaa, sports, wrestling