The 285-pounder from Highland Park entered the NCAA Division 1 Wrestling Championships a No. 2 seed at heavyweight. If you asked him early last week, he would have told you he was going to be in the championship match Saturday night, front and center with a nationally-televised ESPN audience looking on.

Instead, Trice’s final appearance at Wells Fargo Center came Saturday afternoon, when he stormed off the mat and into the tunnel following his second loss in under 24 hours.

“Of course I’m not happy,” Trice said about placing fourth. Then he paused and looked up.

“I believe I should have been in the finals. I think I’m the best wrestler in the country at heavyweight.”

Trice’s run for a national title ended Friday evening, when he suffered a 4-0 decision loss to American’s third-seeded Ryan Flores.

Looking to avenge a 3-1 loss to Flores earlier in the season, Trice spent most of the first period in a stalemate with his opponent. He chose to start the second on bottom, a move CMU head coach Tom Borrelli later regretted.

“We probably made a strategic mistake as a coaching staff,” Borrelli said. “I feel bad because we probably shouldn’t have put Jarod down. If we don’t put him down and take neutral, it’s 1-0. … We thought he could get out. It just didn’t work out.”

While the two ended the second scoreless, Flores began building the foundation for his attack, accumulating more than two minutes of riding time. He chose bottom to start the third and, before Trice could shave a minute off the clock, Flores recorded an escape. Minutes later, he notched a takedown and sent CMU’s last remaining contender into the consolation bracket.

“I put myself in that situation and I wasn’t able to get from bottom,” Trice said. “I should have got out … or maybe I should have stayed on my feet in the second period.”

While Trice refused to place any blame on the coaching staff for strategy, he questioned the tournament’s officiating.

During his run to the semifinals, Trice wrestled a pair of lengthy, overtime matches against unranked opponents.

He beat Virginia Military Institute’s Joshua Wine 3-1 in overtime in the first round, with it taking a pair of overtimes and tiebreakers to finish off Indiana’s Ricardo Alcala in the quarterfinals. He faced off against Alcala again in the consolation semifinals, again needing a pair of overtimes and tiebreakers to shake him.

“I’m in better shape than all of these guys,” Trice said. “You can see it in all my matches — these guys are tired and are trying to steal matches from me. At the end of each period, they’re running off the mat, backing up, backing up. “These referees got to learn to make calls at heavyweight. You can make it at any other weight class. You give the guy a warning, and he’s doing the same (stuff) from start to finish.”

His run came to an end in the third-place match when he was unable to score a takedown. Missouri’s Dominique Bradley scored a takedown in the first period to take a 2-0 lead and added an escape in the second to hold off Trice 3-2, who only scored on a pair of escapes.

He tried to make a late flurry, but time expired before he could get Bradley off his feet.

“We finish that takedown and he wins the match,” Borrelli said. “He just missed his foot.

“I liked the way Jarod wrestled this weekend because he was the aggressor in almost every one of his matches. When he was behind, he went for the win every time, and it just didn’t work out for him. Sometimes you’re going to fail, and sometimes it’s going to work out for you. You just have to the risk.”

Looking ahead

With the collegiate season over, Trice, a junior, will turn his attention to working on his Greco-Roman and freestyle in an attempt to compete at the 2012 Olympic games in London.

Before then, he will have to make a decision to compete at the 2011 University World Championships and U.S. Open Wrestling Championships.

“There’s no such thing as an offseason,” Trice said. “Wrestling’s a lifestyle. … I’m looking at this as a minor speed bump. I just got to bounce back.”