MINNEAPOLIS – The NCAA announced the 47 at-large selections for next weekend’s 2023 NCAA Championships this afternoon, as Andrew Sparks and Garrett Joles each received an at-large bid to compete in Tulsa next weekend.
Sparks and Joles join seven of their fellow teammates who automatically qualified for the national tournament at the Big Ten Championships, making Minnesota one of only nine teams to have nine or more national qualifiers.
Andrew Sparks joins the 165-pound field with a 16-8 record on the season and is coming off a ninth-place finish at the Big Ten championships with a 3-2 record on the weekend. He’ll compete in his second career national tournament, previously competing at the 2021 NCAA Championships, in which we went 0-2.
Garrett Joles will be making his first career NCAA tournament appearance after bumping up to heavyweight in early December, holding a 15-14 record on the season. Joles most recently placed 10th at the conference tournament with a 3-3 record in Ann Arbor.
Looking ahead, seedings and brackets for the NCAA championships will be announced tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. CST as all nine Golden Gopher national qualifiers await where they will line up in their respective brackets.
The NCAA Championships will take place on March 17-19 inside the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla. Full coverage of the event can be found on ESPN’s family of networks, or fans can follow along for full match-by-match updates on Twitter at @GopherWrestling.
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