2024 Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational Preview and Predictions (Part Two)

We’re only a few days away from the toughest tournament of the collegiate regular season, the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational. This is a tournament that featured 37 of the 80 2024 NCAA All-Americans a year ago. Seven of those All-Americans were unable to find the podium in Vegas. Additionally, 40% of the NCAA champions and finalists were in action. 

Turning our attention to this year. The 2024 version of the tournament features six top-ten teams in InterMat’s latest team tournament rankings (#4 Nebraska, #5 Oklahoma State, #6 Virginia Tech, #7 Ohio State, #9 Michigan, and #10 South Dakota State). Six other top-20 teams will be in attendance. 

Individually, we’re still trying to obtain final entries; however, it appears as if this tournament could feature a pair of #1 ranked wrestlers and four past NCAA champions. 

We expect eight past CKLV champions to lay it on the line. 

Before the action gets underway, we’ve gone weight-by-weight to highlight some of the key matchups and potential upsets you could expect - along with predictions for the semifinals and finals. 

Since this is such a massive tournament, we’ve broken it down into two parts - we started with 125-157 yesterday and are finishing up with 165-285 today.

CKLV Pre-Seeds can be found here

165 lbs

Ranked Wrestlers: #3 Peyton Hall (West Virginia), #4 Terrell Barraclough (Utah Valley), #6 Hunter Garvin (Stanford), #7 Sammy Sasso (Ohio State), #8 MJ Gaitan (Iowa State), #9 Cam Amine (Oklahoma State), #10 Will Miller (Appalachian State), #12 Brock Mantanona (Michigan), #17 Maxx Mayfield (Northwestern), #18 Nicco Ruiz (Arizona State), #20 Bubba Wilson (Nebraska), #21 Luka Wick (Cal Poly), #22 Stoney Buell (Purdue), #25 Drake Rhodes (South Dakota State), #28 Cesar Alvan (Columbia), #29 Derek Fields (NC State), #31 Jack Thomsen (Northern Iowa), #33 Enrique Munguia (Rider)

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