Some observations from the regional today:

There were two huge upsets in the 112 quarterfinals with Solis of Bluestem getting defensively pinned by Bradfield of Halstead and Howard of Eureka getting taken to the wood shed by Melcher of Herington. Melcher later lost to Hudson of Caney Valley 7-2, the score was pretty tight going into the third at 2-2. I'd look for Solis and Howard to tear it up out the back door and have a rematch of last year's state blood round match.

125 had some pretty strange seeding with Soward of Halstead getting number 1 after losing to Brown of Flint Hills twice this year. Brown got the number 2, while defending state champion Stalford of Caney Valley ended up at 3, even though he finished ahead of Brown at Eureka. Brown and Soward will matchup in the finals after very close semifinals. Soward beat Ray of Eureka after a questionable call where Ray was stopped for a potentially dangerous move on a stack. Brown beat Stalford in a thrilling match that went down to the wire with Brown getting a reversal at the end of the match to win. He had a similar reversal in the second period where Stalford got out of position riding too high. Stalford will likely meet up with Deets of Central-Burden who gave him all he wanted in an overtime match at Eureka.

I'd like to congratulate Cook of Cherryvale and Bayless of Caney Valley, both of who are freshmen and at 152. They made the semifinals of a typically upperclassmen dominated weight class.

At 160 the semifinals match between Johnson of Marion and Trapp of Herington was pretty exciting with Johnson winning in overtime. It went to overtime after Trapp was called for a fleeing the mat in the third period if my memory serves right.

The 215 weight class had some strange seeding with Taylor of Burlington getting the 4th seed even though he had criteria over Bayless of Caney who was the 2nd seed. I think that seeding mistake may have cost Burlington a shot at bringing home team hardware as it would have made roughly a 5-10 point swing between Caney and Burlington.

I was pretty surprised to see only 5 wrestlers entered at 103. This means 80% of the wrestlers at this weight will go to state.

Marion looks poised to win a regional championship after having all of their middle weights make the finals. Caney will get some added backside points from Stalford and Wunder, but I'm not sure it will be enough.

I'm looking forward to these finals matchups tomorrow:
Hockett v. Wildin at 145
McMichael v. Wildin at 140
Biddle v. Thibault at 130
Castlebury v. Lowe at 189
Zaldivar v. Vander Linden at 119
Soward v. Brown at 125

All of them could go either way and will have implications on the medal stand at Hays.