2024 EIWA Stats, Facts, and Tidbits

Ivy vs EIWA The EIWA had a historic year in terms of the number of NCAA qualifications. This year’s total number was 62! This is nine more than last year’s total. As we know, this was the final year the Ivy League schools will participate in the EIWA Championships. Let’s take a look at the numbers of each league – the Ivies and the remainder of the EIWA. Of the 62 qualifiers, 29 wrestlers are from Ivy League institutions. That equates to 47% of the qualifiers. This creates pretty much an even split between the Ivies and the EIWA – or does it? When you consider the Ivies are only 6 of the 17 teams (35%) – you can see the Ivies actually over-represent the conference when it comes to qualifiers. The remaining 33 qualifiers from EIWA schools make up 53% of the conference’s qualifiers. However, the non-Ivy schools are 11 of 17 (65%) of the conference. The EIWA schools technically under-represent the conference. This is just something to keep in mind when next year’s allocations come out for each conference. Below is a breakdown of the Ivy’s qualifiers. Cornell and Penn lead the way over everyone else. Michael Joyce of Brown is the first NCAA qualifier to represent Brown University since 2019. Cornell having all ten wrestlers in Kansas City will increase the odds they compete for a team trophy again this year. All six schools have at least one qualifier. Cornell – 10 Penn – 8 Columbia – 4 Princeton – 3 Harvard – 3 Brown – 1 Below is a breakdown of the EIWA schools. Lehigh leads the way once again with eight NCAA qualifiers. All eight Mountain Hawks earned automatic bids. LIU’s Anthony D’Alesio is LIU’s first NCAA qualifier at the D1 level in program history. Note that Drexel and Sacred Heart did not have any qualifiers this year. Lehigh – 8 Army – 6 Navy – 5 Bucknell – 5 Binghamton – 4 Franklin & Marshall - 2 LIU - 1 Hofstra – 1 American – 1 Overperformances and Underperformances I was curious to see if any teams peaked better than others. Maybe there was a pattern of wrestlers who outwrestled their respective seeds, and vice versa, ones who underperformed according to their seed. Obviously, there is a caveat here. Wrestlers with high seeds cannot overperform much, and wrestlers with low seeds cannot underperform. This forces the data to be somewhat limited. But, let’s see what we can find. Looking at the highest overperformers, Columbia’s Andy Garr led the way. He was the 17th seed at 157 lbs. He finished the weekend in 6th place – a +11 delta. We saw Tyler Vasquez of Princeton place 5th at 141lbs after beginning as a 12th seed. Two wrestlers at 125lbs had a +7 delta also. LIU’s Robbie Sagaris earned 7th place and Mike Joyce of Brown finished 4th. The 133lbs bracket was bonkers with a lot of movement. The top performer at this weight was Hunter Adrian of Brown. The 16th seed placed 8th – which is a +8 delta. Both Max Leete of American and Sacred Heart’s Andrew Fallon had +6 deltas. Leete was the only one of these three to earn an NCAA allocation. With all of this positive movement, we saw two steep drop-offs of highly seeded wrestlers. Penn’s Michael Colaiocco was 3rd seed and did not place. Franklin & Marshall’s Mason Leiphart also failed to place as the 5th seed. What does this data tell us? Using the 133lbs bracket as an example, the wrestlers who over-performed wrestled more matches in the month leading up to conferences than their counterparts. Of the 17 wrestlers in this bracket, the average number of matches wrestled in February was four. When looking at the percentage of matches wrestled in February compared to the rest of the season, the average for the weight class was 18.3%. For example, Leete of American wrestled 23 matches on the year heading into EIWAs, and 5 of them were in the month of February. This equates to 21.75% of his season’s matches occurring a month before EIWAs. His number of matches was higher than the average and his placement versus seed delta was very high. The same can be said about Brown’s Hunter Adrian. He wrestled 28% of his matches in February and placed 8 spots above his seed. His total number of matches wrestled in February was much higher than the average. When looking at the best over-performances in all weights, a majority of them seem to have wrestled more matches in the month of February compared to others. Andy Garr wrestled 33% of his total matches in February and ended with a +11 delta. The rest of his weight class had a 22% rate of matches in February. Tyler Vasquez competed in 22% of his total matches in February – he ended with a +7 delta of his own where the average percentage of matches wrestled in February at the 141lbs bracket was only 19%. Also from Princeton, heavyweight Matt Cover, wrestled 35% of his matches in February and outplaced his seed by 4 spots. His 35% of matches wrestled in February was 14% higher than the heavyweight class. However, the average number of matches was 23 and Cover only wrestled 20. Cover wrestled fewer total matches, but more at the end of the season. Let’s flip to the underperformances. We mentioned that Colaiocco and Leiphart had the biggest drop-offs from their seeds. Interestingly, they also wrestled much less in February compared to the rest of the bracket. Colaiocco had 3 matches in February (only 13% of his total matches) while Leiphart also had 3 matches too (but this was under 10% of his total schedule). There are many other wrestlers who fit into this statistic as well. Nick Babin wrestled 27 overall matches on the year. Five of those were in February (19%). The 125 lb weight had an average of 21 total matches and 21% in the month of February. He failed to place top 8 while being the 6th seed. Notice, that he had more matches overall and fewer matches in February than the field on average. Kaemen Smith of Navy had 33 matches on the season and only three in February. He wrestled 9 matches more than the average, but 9% in February compared to the average of 25% for the field. His teammate at heavyweight, Grady Griess, also had more matches overall than his opponents and less in the month of February. The 3rd seed finished 7th in a tough bracket. There were wrestlers who wrestled a large chunk of their matches in February. We mentioned Cover above, who outperformed his seed by four spots while wrestling 35% of his matches in the month leading up to EIWAs. Some did the opposite and saw success. At 141lbs, Dylan Chappell of Bucknell is an example of this. He only wrestled 15% of his matches in February, but outperformed his 7th seed by 5 placements. Columbia’s Richard Fedalen is in the same boat, wrestling fewer matches overall and in the month of February. He had a +4 delta on the weekend. Based on the data – a majority of wrestlers who had less mat time in February ended up falling short of their seeds. Again, this was not the case for everyone. It plays out true about three-quarters of the time. Did it cost a couple wrestlers a trip to NCAAs – of course it did. Obviously, there are other factors at play like injuries. Wrestlers who were injured at the end of the year probably had less mat time leading up – obviously. I’m sure a lot of these “under-performances” were injury-related. It was interesting to look into the data. Every team trains differently throughout the year, so the schedule is made accordingly. Every wrestler is different too. Many of them need to taper off at the end of the year. Many of them need to stay competing at a higher level. This was not done to highlight or poo-poo on any team, wrestler, or coach. It was strictly an exercise to see if the number of overall matches and matches wrestled a month before EIWAs had any effect on a wrestler’s outcome at the conference tournament. I am curious to see if we will see similar results next season to verify if there are any trends. This could all be a one-off exercise this year. We shall see! NCAA Qualifier Breakdown There is no surprise that Pennsylvania and New Jersey dominated the number of qualifiers, based on both depth of quality wrestling and location. These two states are typically represented the most at NCAAs, but the geography of the EIWA schools also makes these two states no-brainers. In my opinion, it was great to see states like Florida and Massachusetts have multiple representatives. One interesting stat here is that five of the seven qualifiers at 197 lbs are from Pennsylvania. Below is a breakdown of the 15 states that have an NCAA qualifier from the EIWA. Note, each wrestler’s hometown was used. PA – 16 NJ – 13 OH – 7 NY – 6 FL – 5 MA – 3 GA – 2 WI – 2 IL – 2 CO – 1 MD – 1 ME – 1 NC – 1 NE – 1 RI – 1 There are nine freshmen qualifiers of the 62 from the EIWA. Seven of those nine are true freshmen. The redshirt freshmen are both Lehigh wrestlers in Ryan Crookham and Kelvin Griffin. True (first-year) freshmen include Luke Stanich of Lehigh, Max Gallagher of Penn, Braden Basile of Army, Meyer Shapiro of Cornell, Gunner Filipowicz of Army, Myles Takats of Bucknell, and Lucas Stoddard of Army. Notice that Army and Lehigh both have three freshmen NCAA qualifiers. They were 2nd and 3rd as a team in the conference this year. With Cornell leaving next season, the two favorites will have plenty of quality youth returning. When we look at multiple time qualifiers – there are too many to list. When we narrow the list down to 4X qualifiers, the list is much more manageable. The seven below will be competing at the NCAA Championships for the 4th time! (I noted each wrestler’s placements at NCAAs, or highest finish, if applicable) Cornell’s Vito Arujau (NCAA 1ST,3RD, 4TH) Lehigh’s Malyke Hines (R12, R16) Harvard’s Phil Conigliaro (R12, R16) Binghamton’s Jacob Nolan (R16) Army’s Ben Pasiuk (R16) Penn’s Michael Colaiocco (R16, NWCA 2nd Team) Penn’s Cole Urbas Lou Deprez of Binghamton will make his 5th NCAA appearance. He’s finished 8th and has been top-12 twice. He was named an NWCA All-American after the canceled 2020 tournament, making him a two-time All-American. Deprez is one of the very few five-time NCAA qualifiers across the country. Deprez also has 3 EIWA titles in his great career. He is the first wrestler from the school to win 3 EIWA titles. He is already the first two-time All-American in school history. Next weekend, he will look to further cement his legacy into Binghamton athletics. Lastly, there are two other multiple-time EIWA Champs in this year’s NCAA field. Julian Ramirez was the lone wrestler in this category to win a title this year. He will have one more season next year for a three-peat. Cornell’s Vito Arujau has been a champion twice in the EIWA, at 125lbs and 133lbs.

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