Brent Chriswell bounced from state to state and school to school growing up as the son of a construction worker.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that the sophomore wrestler is on his third college in three different states in three years. His latest, and almost certainly final, stop is at Boise State.

"I guess I'm used to it," Chriswell said. "I didn't plan on going to all these schools. It's just something that happened."

Chriswell and the Broncos open competition at the Pac-10 Championships on Sunday in Fullerton, Calif. The tournament, which determines qualifiers for the NCAA Championships, concludes Monday night.

Chriswell, then at Arizona State, beat Boise State's Kirk Smith for the Pac-10 title at 184 pounds last year.

Now they're training partners - and both are ranked in the top five in the nation. Smith, the highest-ranked Bronco, is fourth at 184. Chriswell is fifth at 197.

Since they're teammates, wrestling fans won't get to see a rematch of last year's showdown.

"We have our rematches in the (wrestling) room," Smith said. "We push each other pretty hard."

Those two are just the beginning of a stacked lineup that makes the Broncos the prohibitive favorite to win their second consecutive conference title. The Broncos went 68-12 in Pac-10 dual matches this season with six wrestlers winning every match.

"We've got a good swing of momentum right now," Smith said. "We're looking at keeping that going into nationals."

The Broncos are ranked ninth in the nation. Their goal is a national trophy, which requires a top-four finish. That quest is complicated by a new system this year for allocating berths in the NCAA meet - a system that trimmed the Pac-10's berths from 38 last year to 20 this year.

So while the Broncos have been cruising for weeks, they need a mistake-free couple of days in Fullerton.

"We need to get everybody in (to nationals)," Smith said. " If we do that at Pac-10s, we have a legitimate shot at reaching our goals at nationals."

The unexpected arrival of Chriswell this season certainly helped, too.

The Broncos recruited Chriswell out of Port Orchard, Wash., but lost to Purdue. The Boilermakers coach resigned after Chriswell's redshirt season and suggested he transfer to Arizona State.

"I just listened to him - and it was a bad decision," Chriswell said.

His escape hatch opened when the Sun Devils decided to scrap their wrestling program. That decision was reversed quickly, but Chriswell got out while he could. He nearly transferred to Oklahoma before he found out Boise State was interested.

"We had to work on it, but we got him here," coach Greg Randall said.

One condition of the transfer was that Chriswell move to 197 pounds because Randall was committed to Smith at 184. That wasn't a problem, since 197 was a more natural weight for the lanky Chriswell.

Injuries delayed his start to the season, but he finished 10-1 - with his only loss coming against top-ranked Jake Varner of Iowa State.

Chriswell has recorded three pins. He also injured a Cal State Fullerton wrestler with a powerful takedown.

"He can go out there and put you on your back at any time," Randall said. "He's dangerous. He doesn't wrestle like a 197-pounder. He wrestles more like a 133-pounder."

That combination of size, strength and agility, Smith said, makes Chriswell a unique wrestler. He jumped out to a big early lead on Smith in last year's Pac-10 final and held on for a 10-7 win.

"He's really strong for being as tall and long as he is," said Smith, who is 60-7 at Boise State. "With that combination and the style of moves that he does, it makes it really hard to know where he's coming from. You never know what positions he's going to be able to explode out of. I've never wrestled anybody else like him."