WVU Wrestling: Watters/Hall Finish in 4th/5th Place at NCAA Championships

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — WVU wrestling finished their time at the NCAA Championships at the T-Mobile Center with both No. 5 first-year Ty Watters and No. 9 senior Peyton Hall placing in the top five Saturday morning.

Watters (30-6) finished in Fourth Place in his first season as a Mountaineer, while Hall won his Seventh Place match for his best finish in his four-year college career, after he finished in Eighth Place in 2022. 

Watters faced a strong challenger in No. 2 Arizona State redshirt junior Kyle Parco in the Consolation Semifinals.

Parco started out the match with a takedown of Watters held that lead through to the third period, 3-2.

Watters began that third period on top and caused Parco all kinds of problems. He had a chance to just take the riding time and go to sudden victory, but that wasn’t good enough for him. He had to get Parco on his back for a pin at 6:48 to make the Third Place Match.

He then wrestled fellow first-year Pennsylvania native in No. 6 Penn State’s Tyler Kasak for Third Place.

Kasak made a first period takedown to get the lead, but Watters made two escapes to get it within one point. Kasak also started the third period in neutral to nullify Watters on top, which worked out in his benefit as he would win on a 3-2 decision.

Watters is the third Mountaineer to finish in fourth place at the NCAA Championships, joining Robert Perry (1955) and Dominick Black (1991).

Hall (31-9) took on No. 8 Nebraska first-year Antrell Taylor (23-10) in the Seventh Place match. This served as a rematch of their Round of 32 match, where Taylor won a close 11-9 decision.

The rematch between the two wrestlers ended up another close battle. Hall led 1-0 after two periods with an escape and then started on top for the third period. He rode Taylor for most of the third period, building up riding time and by the time Taylor escaped, Hall won on a 2-1 decision.

“The last match, I feel like really put an emphasis on pushing the pace,” Hall said on his initial bout with Taylor. “He’s a very good counter wrestler. I got caught in that high body lock. Right off the rip for five [points] and started coming back and I got caught in it again. This time I was trying to be more smarter, methodical with my attacks. I didn’t want to be in 100 times and finish once. So it was just a little smarter.”

Hall is the first student-athlete for WVU wrestling to finish in Seventh Place at the NCAA Championships since Killian Cardinale did so in 2021.  

WVU Wrestling finishes in 17th place at the 2024 NCAA Championships with 31.5 points, the highest since 2004, when they finished ranked tied for 16th.