This marks the second-straight tournament appearance for Gasca and Eicher, while Hughes will make his first tournament appearance and is the first freshman to qualify since Sean McMurray in 2011.

Gasca, a 141-pounder from Kingsburg, Calif, earned a No. 13 seed and will face Penn State’s Jimmy Gulibon, who has a 14-10 record on the season. Gasca faced Gulibon in the Big Ten Championships quarterfinal and pinned him at the 6:20 mark.

Gasca enters this weekend’s bouts coming off a second place finish at the conference championships. His finish was his career-high best finish at the Big Ten Championships and was also the highest scoring individual Spartan wrestler since Franklin Gomez won the conference title in 2009.

At 165 pounds, Hughes earned a national seed at No. 15 and will take on Northern Colorado’s Keilan Torres, who holds a 28-14 record after finishing third in the Big XII Championships.

A Lowell, Ind. native, Hughes has won 21 of his last 28 matches and has a 26-8 record. He finished fifth in the Big Ten Championships and has won by shutout in 14 of his last 17 victories.

Eicher, a 133-pounder who transferred from Northern Illinois last summer, is slated to face No. 12 seed Josh Alber of Northern Iowa in the first round. The two wrestlers faced each other in a 2016 bout, which Alber won, 9-2.

Eicher finished eighth at the Big Ten Championships and won the Mid-American Conference Championship at 133 pounds last season as a redshirt-freshman at Northern Illinois and advanced to the NCAA National Championships before he transferred to MSU. He holds a 21-16 overall record this season.

MSU wrestling finished the season with a 5-11 record, 1-8 in conference play.