No matter the accomplishments of a high school wrestler, competing at the highest level of the sport in college is an entirely different animal.

During his high school career, Groveland’s Tyler Knox was certainly accomplished. He won a New England title for St. John’s Prep and two for Northfield-Mt. Hermon. He was a three-time All-America and two-time national high school champion.

Now a redshirt freshman at Stanford University, he’s experienced the difference first hand.

“The season is two and a half times as long as the high school season,” Knox said. “The one big match you have during the season, the one you’ve pointed to all season, you have that every night.

“The practices are very competitive. Everyone was a state champion in high school.”

Knox has handled the transition well, however. He has posted a 22-4 record and entered the ACC tournament last weekend ranked eighth nationally at 133 pounds.

The conference tournament didn’t go quite as well as he planned, however. He placed fourth, reaching the semifinals before bowing to Virginia Tech’s Connor McGonagle (a four-time New Hampshire state champion at Timberlane Regional High School), 1-0. In the third-place match, top-seeded Ethan Oakley of North Carolina pulled out the 3-1 victory.

Although the NCAA allocated the ACC three automatic berths for the national championship tournament at 133 pounds, Knox received an at-large berth for the NCAA tournament, March 20-22 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.

“The losses were all to the top guys,” said Stanford coach Chris Ayres. “He has an overall quality body of work.”

Despite those losses, Knox had his share of highlights, most notably a 15-10 decision over top-ranked Drake Ayala of Iowa in the Carver-Hawkeye Arena in November.

“Carver-Hawkeye is the pinnacle of wrestling in the country,” Knox said. “After the match, I went out to dinner with my parents and we saw everyone with Iowa wrestling jackets and sweatshirts. There were 13,000 people in there. It was loud, it was hostile. After the match, they were very respectful of me.”

Said Ayres, “He really made his mark when he beat Ayala in Carver-Hawkeye.”

Knox also placed fifth at the Cliff Keane Las Vegas Invitational and won the championship at the Midlands tournament hosted by Northwestern University. He earned the Dan Gable Outstanding Wrestler Award and helped the Cardinal capture the team title.

“Beating (Dylan Shawver) of Rutgers was pretty big for us,” he said.

Tyler Knox of St. John’s Prep was a Boston Herald All-Scholastic

Ayres, who previously coached at Princeton University, is in his second year at Stanford so Knox arrived on campus at Palo Alto, Calif., at the same time as Ayres.

“He’s so unassuming off the mat,” Ayres said. “On the mat, he’s so unorthodox. He’s funky as heck. When he wrestles he’s so dialed in. He just stays within his system. His composure is second to none.”

This year is Stanford’s first in the ACC. The school is in the unique position of being the conference’s only member on the Pacific Coast. The other schools that offer wrestling, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Virginia, Tech, Duke, Pittsburgh and Virginia, are all in the Eastern Time Zone.

“The travel is a lot,” Knox said. “It can be a challenge, especially with academic work and the time differences. An assignment might be due at midnight (Pacific time) but that’s 3 a.m. on the East Coast.”

At the NCAA championships, the top eight in each weight class are All-Americas. Knox hopes to be in the mix for that.

“He could be on top,” Ayres said. “Any one of the top guys could win it.”