The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga finished third in the Southern Conference wrestling tournament Sunday in Boone, North Carolina, well behind champion Campbell and runner-up Appalachian State.
Junior Chris Debien was the Mocs' lone individual champion, taking home the title at 133 pounds. UTC had three runners-up: senior Alonzo Allen at 125, freshman Tanner Smith at 149 and junior Rodney Jones at 197.
Debien, Smith and Jones qualified for the NCAA tournament. The league had two allocations at 149, which allowed Smith to advance beyond SoCon competition, while Jones won a match for true second place, and with two bids allocated at his weight class, he also made it.
Jake Huffine (133), Ryan Resnick (157) and Dominic Lame (184) earned third-place finishes for UTC, which finished with 62 team points. Campbell scored 95 and Appalachian State 92.5, with the Mocs followed by The Citadel (42.5), Gardner-Webb (23.5), Davidson (22.5) and Virginia Military Institute (17).
Debien, the top seed at 141, had a first-round bye before edging past Gardner-Webb's Blake Mulkey, 3-2. In the finals, Appalachian State's Irvin Enriquez led 2-0 early, but an escape, a takedown and two backpoints gave Debien a lead he never relinquished. It is his second career SoCon title.
"I am proud of how Chris competed, especially in his last match," UTC coach Kyle Ruschell said in a school release. "The game plan was to come out and be offensive, and even though he got taken down first, he continued to stay offensive. He stuck with the game plan and separated himself with a 12-7 win."
The third-seeded Smith, the SoCon freshman of the year, started his day with a major decision over Gardner-Webb's Chase McKinney before avenging a regular-season loss to Appalachian State's Matt Zovistoski in the semifinals with a 3-2 win. Smith lost to ninth-ranked Josh Hall of Campbell in the finals, falling 6-2 after trailing 3-0 entering the final period.
"Tanner battled through injuries all year and did a great job to stay as healthy as possible and wrestle as hard as he could," Ruschell said in the release. "He avenged a loss from earlier in the year to get to the finals and earn a bid."
Jones had the most dramatic route to an NCAA bid. He edged Campbell's Austin McNeil 5-4 in the opening round before losing 9-0 to Appalachian State's Randall Diable. Jones defeated VMI's Chris Beck in the consolation semifinals, 2-1, then had to face McNeil again in the consolation finals, this time scoring two early takedowns in an 11-5 win.
That set up the match for true second place with The Citadel's Sawyer Root, who had lost in the finals to Diabe.
Root, who had defeated Jones twice this season, led 4-2 to start the third period. Jones had a pair of takedowns to take a 6-5 lead, but Root tied it with an escape with 30 seconds left to send the bout to overtime. It went to two 30-second tiebreaker periods, where Jones pulled off a reversal with no time showing on the clock. The call was challenged but upheld.
Contact Lindsey Young at lyoung@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6296. Follow him on Twitter @youngsports22.