NCAA Wrestling Tournament breakdown and seed analysis for New Jersey

Princeton University's Patrick Glory was seeded second at 125 pounds for the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships Wednesday night.

The NCAA Tournament will take place Nov. 16-18 in Tulsa, Okla.

Glory, who was a two-time NJSIAA champion and four-time state finalist at Delbarton from 2014-2018, was the national runner-up to Michigan's Nick Suriano last season.

More:NCAA wrestling tournament brackets 2023: Top 8 seeds in each weight class

The No. 1 seed at 125 and the heavy favorite to conclude his sensational career with a fourth national championship is Iowa's Spencer Lee.

Glory is in the same half of the bracket as Oregon State's returning All-American Brandon Kaylor, who is seeded seventh and Nebraska's Big Ten Conference runner-up Liam Cronin, who is the No. 3 seed.

165 is loaded

The 165-pound bracket class features three past national champions and a returning national runner-up.

Iowa State's David Carr, who won at 157 pounds, is the top seed after he pinned Missouri's 2022 165-pound national champion Keegan O'Toole in the Big 12 Conference Tournament. O'Toole is seeded second.

The third past national champion is Stanford's Shane Griffith, who won at 165 in 2021 and was the runner-up at 165 last season. He is seeded ninth and in the same quarterfinal bracket as Carr after he was defeated in the Pacific 12 Conference final.

Griffith was a three-time NJSIAA champion at Bergen Catholic.

Also, in the top half of the bracket is Princeton's Quincy Mondey, who was the runner-up at 157 last season. Monday is the No. 5 seed because of two defeats to Cornell's Julian Ramirez, including one in the EIWA final. He could meet Ramirez in the quarterfinal.

Monday, who made the decision to compete at 165 at the Midlands Championships, defeated No. 3 seed Dean Hamiti of Wisconsin in the Midlands final.

197 is wild

The 197-pound weight class has been one of the deepest and most contentious all season.

The seeds have made it even more interesting.

Penn State's Max Dean, the defending champion, is seeded ninth because of a defeat to Nebraska's Silas Allred in the Big Ten final. Those two could meet in the pre-quarterfinal.

Dean also was defeated by Rider's Ethan Laird and Lehigh's Michael Beard in December. Laird and Beard, who transferred to Lehigh from Penn State after last season, are seeded No. 4 and 5 and could meet in the quarterfinal.

Laird is also in the same semifinal bracket as Dean. Pitt's unbeaten Nino Bonaccorsi, the Atlantic Coast Conference champion and 2021 finalist, is the No. 1 seed.

Mekhi Lewis in with familiar foes

Mekhi Lewis, the former Bound Brook High School state champion and the 2019 165-pound national champion, is seeded third at 174 pounds behind Penn State's two-time national champion Carter Starocci and Nebraska's Mikey Labriola.

Lewis was defeated in a tiebreaker period by Starocci in last year's national final. He was defeated by Labriola during the season.

In the first round, Lewis will wrestle Rutgers' Jackson Turley, who was eighth at the weight in 2021. Turley, who was seeded 30th, earn the seventh and last automatic berth from the Big Ten Conference.

Rutgers seeds and draws

Rutgers, which has seven wrestlers in the tournament with a chance for eighth should Joey Olivieri get in as an alternate at 141 should somebody drop out, wound up with some tough draws.

The Scarlet Knights, whose highest placing in the Big Ten Tournament, was a sixth at 184 from freshman Brian Soldano, do not have a wrestler seeded in the top 12

Redshirt freshman Dean Peterson is Rutgers' highest seed at 13 at 125. He is in the same pre-quarterfinal bracket as Purdue's No. 4 seed Matt Ramos. Ramos pinned Peterson in a Big Ten Tournament wrestleback and led Lee 8-1 during a bout this season.

Graduate student Joe Heilmann is seeded 17th at 133 and in the same pre-quarterfinal bracket as Penn State's two-time national champion Roman Bravo-Young.

Soldano is seeded 18th and will have a rematch with Michigan State's Layne Malczewski in the first-round. Malczewski majored Soldano on Jan. 20.

Sophomore Andrew Clark is seeded 21st at 157 and will wrestle Purdue's Kendall Coleman in the first round.

Turley, as mentioned before, is matched up with Lewis, heavyweight Boone McDermott is seeded 24th and in the same part of the bracket as No. 1 seed Mason Parris of Michigan. McDermott will wrestle Northwestern's Lucas Davison in the first round. Redshirt freshman Anthony White is seeded 32nd at 149, and if he wins his preliminary-round bout, will meet No. 1 seed and three-time national champion Yianni Diakomilhalis of Cornell in the first round.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: NCAA Wrestling tournament: Pairings analysis for NJ participants