DeKALB | Coach Dave Grant made sure his wrestlers had a good week of practice heading into the weekend tournament in Las Vegas.

The two-day Cliff Keen Invitational featured 49 of the top wrestling programs in the country and the Huskies needed to be at their best to succeed.

Unfortunately, NIU was only able to finish in the middle of the pack, earning 25th place. The Huskie grapplers finished second among the five participating MAC schools in what proved to be the toughest tournament of the year.

Pat Castillo, ranked 19th in the nation in the 125-pound class, highlighted the tournament by finishing in sixth place in his weight class.

Castillo was able to post a 6-4 overtime win over Columbia’s Brandon Kinney.

However, he was pinned by Michigan’s Mark Moos in the fifth-place match.

“Pat wrestled some pretty tough matches,” Coach Grant said of Castillo’s performance.

Duke Burk, also nationally ranked, had two wrestleback victories and a Round of 32 win. Among those victories were two decisive 6-1 and 11-3 victories over Chance Litton of West Virginia and Preston Pavlich of Wyoming.

Burk fell short in the Round of 16 match, losing to Justin Barent of Columbia.

Despite the final finishing place, Grant was pleased with how his team finished the tournament.

“Overall, a pretty good performance by our team,” Grant said. “I felt everybody wrestled hard. We had some close matches that could have gone either way. It’s definitely some great competition out here. I’m proud of how our guys wrestled.”