The road to a national title runs through the Gateway to the West for Scott Moore and Tim Foley, who will represent Virginia in the 2004 NCAA wrestling championships this week in St. Louis. Both of the fifth-year seniors secured automatic bids to nationals with individual ACC championship performances at the conference tournament last week.
Virginia came in second as a team in the event, one place higher than its 2003 finish. The Cavaliers' 76 points were eight behind ACC champion N.C. State, whose overall depth carried the Wolfpack to its 13th overall conference championship.
"It's a little bittersweet," Virginia coach Lenny Bernstein said. "We wrestled either at or above our seeds at each weight class, so from that perspective [a second place finish] was a success, but we had higher aspirations. We fell about eight points short."
Moore easily cruised to an ACC 141-pound title and received the ACC's Most Valuable Wrestler award. He whipped the only two wrestlers posing as competition with technical fall scores of 15-0 -- a skunk of Duke's bottom-seeded David Shvartsman -- and 17-2, flattening top contender Alex Hernandez of N.C. State in the final.
More importantly, Moore went the course of the regular season and conference tournament without dropping a single contest. With five more roadblocks on the highway to perfection, Moore's performance in the NCAA tune-up added padding to his overall record now at an eye-popping 46-0 -- a U.Va. record, 31 of which coming by pin -- heading into NCAAs.
Moore is unconcerned with the common perception that facing lackluster competition in the final tests before a national championship tournament is a recipe for letdown -- and possible disaster.
"ACCs were not real tough, but I didn't really need anything [to prepare me]," Moore said. "I didn't want to get injured, did enough to get by, and now I've gotten in a week of good practice wrestling tough guys in the [practice] room. I think I'm well prepared."
Foley comes into his third consecutive appearance at NCAA's from the opposite perspective of his cohort. With a season that would normally garner exclusive praise of a Virginia wrestler, Foley quietly sidled into the No. 2 position for most pins ever in a single season at U.Va. The all-time single season leader? Moore. Foley's13 falls passed the previous record of 11, which by the time it was eclipsed for the second instance was no longer worthy of generating much buzz.
At ACC's, Foley had a much rougher go of it than Moore in fighting for an automatic plane ticket to St. Louis. He cruised through the semifinal round of the 165-pound bracket with a 13-1 major decision over North Carolina's Garret Atkinson before facing rival Dustin Kawa, a No. 2 seed for the Wolfpack, in the final. Foley labored his way through an 8-6 decision for the win and the individual ACC title.
"To win another ACC title was special, but the focus automatically turned to St. Louis and winning a title out there," Foley said.
The two friends will head west together on Thursday and prepare to make one last desperate run in their wrestling careers. Five victories in a row will give Virginia its first national champion wrestler in school history, and in a season of record-breakers, one more being added to the cart doesn't seem too far-fetched.
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