After a late-season surge gave it considerable momentum, the wrestling team suffered a disappointing showing at Saturday's Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament in Raleigh.
No Duke wrestler won a conference title, and the Blue Devils (6-5, 1-3 in the ACC) finished last with 31 points, one-and-a-half points behind fourth-place N.C. State. Still, two of Duke's three captains, Dan Covatta and Chris Heckel, won bids to the NCAA Tournament.
Covatta, a senior and Duke's leader with 30 wins entering the tourney, earned an NCAA bid by beating Adrian Miles of Virginia, 6-2, in the semifinals at 142 lbs. After reaching the NCAA Tournament as a freshman, Covatta failed to qualify in his sophomore and junior years.
"Somebody said to me before I went out there [Saturday] to remember the feeling I felt the last two years, when I didn't make it to nationals," Covatta said. "That really fired me up."
With the triumph, Covatta advanced to the ACC finals, where he faced No. 1 seed Khalil Abdul-Malik of North Carolina. Abdul-Malik had handed Covatta his only regular-season ACC setback, a 4-3 decision, in UNC's Feb. 23 dual meet victory. Because of his underdog role, and because he had already secured an NCAA bid, Covatta approached his finals match with considerable enthusiasm.
"I felt going in like it was my match to win," Covatta said. "I had everything to gain, and he had everything to lose. I didn't put any pressure on myself, I just figured I'd have fun and enjoy my last match in the ACC Tournament."
Covatta battled his rival to a 4-4 draw through regulation and, during the extra session, nearly tagged Abdul-Malik with his first ACC loss of the year. Early in overtime, Covatta nearly put Abdul-Malik on his back, but Abdul-Malik recovered to win the match with a two-point takedown.
At 126 lbs., Heckel, who entered the ACC Tournament on a 15-match winning streak, dropped a 7-4 decision to Virginia's Steve Garland in the semifinals. Heckel rebounded for a 9-4 win over Maryland's Scott Herfel in the consolation semifinals, but he suffered a leg injury during his consolation final match. Heckel wrestled through the ailment, but struggled and lost, 6-0, to N.C. State's Anthony Sorantino.
Heckel's outstanding regular season, in which he went 23-4 and won all four of his conference matches, convinced ACC coaches to give him one of the league's five at-large NCAA bids. The top two finishers at each weight class receive automatic NCAA bids, and the at-large bids go to the top five wrestlers, as selected by ACC coaches, who do not reach the conference finals.
"They consider past record and how well they think each guy could do in the NCAA Tournament, and usually, the third-place finisher gets to go," coach Bill Harvey said. "I was pretty happy because it's not too often that they give [a bid] to somebody who finishes fourth."
Senior Jacob Hart, wrestling at 167 lbs., approached the tourney with high hopes for an NCAA invitation. Hart knocked off N.C. State's Dan Campanella in a first-round match but fell to Maryland's Damon Stephens in the semifinals, 7-3. In a rematch of his first-round win, Hart lost to Campanella, 5-3, in the third-place match.
"I wasn't disappointed with my effort," Hart said. "If anything, I had too much effort. I was too keyed up for my matches, and I wasn't able to relax or to perform at the level I needed to reach. I was too fired up because I wanted so badly to win at ACCs and to make it to NCAAs."
Sophomore Matt Mapes turned in one of the Blue Devils' best performances, winning two of his three matches at 158 lbs. to capture third place. Mapes topped Ben Bache of N.C. State, 8-2, in the first round but ran into a buzzsaw in the semifinals, getting shut out by the eventual 158-lb. champion, Maryland's Arash Alizadeh. In the consolation finals, the Duke sophomore recorded his fourth win over an ACC opponent, as he edged UNC's Tom Bogan, 3-2.
"Matt pretty much controlled his match with Bogan," Harvey said. "He had a good tournament. [Alizadeh] is tough, and Matt had trouble matching up with him."
Freshman heavyweight Alex Hunt and reached the consolation finals with an overtime pin of N.C. State's Troy Beadnell, but the Blue Devils' wrestlers at 118, 134, 150 and 190 lbs. dropped all of their matches.
"We still had seven guys alive in the last session, so that was encouraging," Covatta said. "But it was one of those days where it seemed like nothing was going right for us. The shame is that you can have a great season, and then you have one bad day, and it's all over."
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