Bonus Points - should MFF's decide a team championship?

[Wrestleknownothing]

I mentioned that I needed to add bonus points into my estimations of team finishes based on the major ranking services. Turns out that extracting bonus point data at the individual wrestler level is a very heavy lift, so in true know nothing form, I did not do that lift.

Instead I took a look at the total bonus points per year by weight from 2010 - 2022. I separated the first and last rounds from the middle rounds on each side of the bracket to create six categories. As expected, it gets harder to score bonus points as the tournament goes on, with one exception:

The exception is in the third, fifth, and seventh place matches (Last Round, Consolation Bracket). But this number is greatly inflated by the number of medical forfeits in those matches. Which raises the question, should bonus points be awarded for medical forfeits in the third, fifth, and seventh place matches given that there is a chance that could decide a team podium position?

It looks like this happened in 2015. Missouri beat out Cornell for fourth by two points. And in the 141 seventh place match, Lavion Mayes received the automatic extra placement point and two bonus points when Anthony Ashnault was unable to wrestle for a potential three point swing.

The next closest this came to happening was 2016. Virginia Tech beat out Iowa for fourth place by a single point. If either of Iowa's two eighth place finishers that year had instead been the beneficiary of a MFF they would have come in third.

[jchapman]

15 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

I mentioned that I needed to add bonus points into my estimations of team finishes based on the major ranking services. Turns out that extracting bonus point data at the individual wrestler level is a very heavy lift, so in true know nothing form, I did not do that lift.

Instead I took a look at the total bonus points per year by weight from 2010 - 2022. I separated the first and last rounds from the middle rounds on each side of the bracket to create six categories. As expected, it gets harder to score bonus points as the tournament goes on, with one exception:

The exception is in the third, fifth, and seventh place matches (Last Round, Consolation Bracket). But this number is greatly inflated by the number of medical forfeits in those matches. Which raises the question, should bonus points be awarded for medical forfeits in the third, fifth, and seventh place matches given that there is a chance that could decide a team podium position?

It looks like this happened in 2015. Missouri beat out Cornell for fourth by two points. And in the 141 seventh place match, Lavion Mayes received the automatic extra placement point and two bonus points when Anthony Ashnault was unable to wrestle for a potential three point swing.

The next closest this came to happening was 2016. Virginia Tech beat out Iowa for fourth place by a single point. If either of Iowa's two eighth place finishers that year had instead been the beneficiary of a MFF they would have come in third.

Great point. But if you don't award the MFF points, then the reverse could happen.  A team could potentially choose to MFF as a strategy to preserve a close team win and not risk giving up bonus points.

[Wrestleknownothing]

5 minutes ago, jchapman said:

Great point. But if you don't award the MFF points, then the reverse could happen.  A team could potentially choose to MFF as a strategy to preserve a close team win and not risk giving up bonus points.

Also a great point. If you are leading by two, two and a half or three, MFF and lock in the one point win, half point win or tie. Hmmm. Let's speculate on which coach would stoop so low.