Premier college wrestling tournament begins Friday in Las Vegas

Wrestling fans will be treated to some of the nation’s best collegiate competition this weekend at the annual Cliff Keen Invitational.

Forty-six teams and more than 100 ranked wrestlers, per InterMat, will be on display at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Of the 25 teams in InterMat’s tournament rankings, 13 will compete.

No. 2 Ohio State, which won the invitational a year ago, will be the top-ranked team, followed by Michigan, Arizona State, Virginia Tech, Minnesota, Nebraska and Northern Iowa, which are all in the top 15 in the rankings.

“It’s probably one of the deepest and the largest. You have (schools) from all different scopes. The Big 10, Ivy League schools, some of the West Coast schools,” tournament director Mark Churella said. “You name it, we probably have the teams here. It’s a super deep field, and it’s going to be two days of really good competition.”

Each weight class has multiple wrestlers in InterMat’s top 10 rankings. Arizona State’s Zahid Valencia (174 pounds) and Ohio State’s Kollin Moore (197 pounds) are ranked at the top of their weight class by InterMat.

Michigan’s Steven Micic (133), Ohio State’s Myles Martin (184) and Michigan’s Adam Coon (285) are No. 2 in their classes.

Winners from last year’s invitational who are expected to compete this year include Ohio State’s Micah Jordan (157), Michigan’s Logan Massa (165) and Valencia.

The competition begins at 9 a.m. Friday and concludes Saturday with the championship finals at 3 p.m.

“There’s going to be a lot of good matchups, probably for a lot of weight classes. Maybe in particular 174, 184. There’s just a lot of returning All-Americans, some NCAA champs in certain weight classes,” Churella said. “You’re going to have a good team race as well with about four to five teams that could possibly win this thing, so I think it’s going to be a tight team race with some of these schools as well.”

Contact Betsy Helfand at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BetsyHelfand on Twitter.