Four wrestlers finished in the top five spots of their respective weight classes as the Central Michigan wrestling team finished seventh at the Midlands Championships Thursday in Evanston, Ill.

Sophomore Ben Bennett finished runner-up at 174 pounds for the second consecutive year, while junior Jarod Trice finished runner-up at heavyweight, one year after winning the division.

Scotti Sentes and Donnie Corby also placed in their weight classes, finishing third and fifth respectively.

“As a team I felt that we could have done better, but we had some individuals who did very well,” said head coach Tom Borrelli. “We had four guys wrestle well and the other guys, we feel, could have competed better.”

CMU was one of four teams to send more than one wrestler to the finals. Missouri (100.5 points) failed to send anyone to the finals, though its five wrestlers in the last round of the wrestle-back bracket was enough as the Tigers went on to win the team title.

Bennett didn’t give up a single point through his first four matches, before suffering a 9-4 loss in the finals against No. 1 seed Jon Reader of Iowa State.

“Ben wrestled well until the final match, where he was down 5-9 pretty quick,” Borrelli said. “After that he wrestled pretty well, but we’d like to see him have more composure at the beginning of the match.”

His tear through the 174-pound class included knocking off Lehigh’s Austin Meys by a 6-0 decision in the semifinal round.

The heavyweight final round wasn’t the first time Trice wrestled Lehigh’s Zach Rey. He fell to Rey during the teams’ dual meet on December 12 by a 2-1 tiebreaker, suffering the same result Thursday.

“Trice wrestled a good tournament,” Borrelli said. “He was seeded sixth and made the finals, so it was good for him, but he hasn’t broken through against Rey yet.”

As the sixth seed, Trice worked his way through the heavyweight bracket, knocking off 11th seed Eric Bugenhagen (Wisconsin-Madison), No. 3 D.J. Russo (Rutgers) and then No. 2 Ryan Tomei (Pittsburgh) before dropping the decision to top-seed Rey.

Sentes dropped a 7-2 decision to No. 1 Tyler Graff (Wisconsin) in the semifinals, but bounced back later by winning two consolation matches and beating Cal Poly’s Flip Novachkov by a 5-1 decision in the third-place match.

“Scotti’s made some improvements, especially since Vegas,” Borrelli said, “But I was really pleased with Donnie Corby. He’s been a little inconsistent this year, but he wrestled a really consistent tournament and he’s started turning the corner.”

Corby found himself on the losing side of a 3-2 decision in his first match of the tournament, but went on to win his next four matches before losing another 3-2 match. He took fifth place by a medical forfeit.

All-American senior Mike Miller did not compete in the event due to injury problems.

“(Mike’s) had issues all year, recovering from shoulder surgery and then hurting his knee out in Vegas and then he got dinged up a little bit at practice during the break,” Borrelli said. “The earliest we’ll get him back is probably the home meet against Michigan.”

The two-day tournament was the team’s first competition since its dual meet against Lehigh, in which it lost 23-9. Borrelli said the time off helped the wrestlers improve and look sharper than at the Cliff Keen Invitational on Dec. 4.

The Chippewas head back home to prepare for their first conference dual meet of the season, against Northern Illinois at 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 6 in DeKalb, Ill.

“I feel like right now we’re a lot better tournament team than a dual meet team,” Borrelli said. “I think we have a lot to improve on before we have the best dual meet team in the conference.”