171.5 Is The New 170

[Wrestleknownothing]

With all the talk on Happy Valley Insider and Go Iowa Awesome about whether Penn State will break Iowa’s all-time NCAA team scoring record it is time to put some stuff straight.

The first thing is that Iowa fans are more fatalistic than PSU fans are optimistic.

• Each site ran a poll asking if this PSU team could reach 1997 Iowa’s team scoring record of 170 points.
   
• While only 18.8% of voters (13 of 69) on the PSU site thought it would happen, 30.8% of voters (45 of 146) on the Iowa site had that uneasy feeling.

Both fan bases surprise me with their takes.

But the real issue is…

What is the team scoring record?

Well, why do you ask? Can’t you just look it up? Seesh, this guy really does know nothing.

I did look it up. And what I found was Lee Corso standing in my way saying, “Not so fast, my friend”. When Iowa put up their 170 team points in 1997 the rules for scoring the results of a match, for advancement, and for placement were different than they are now.

Scoring 1997 v 2024

There are differences between then and now in all three elements of team scoring.

1. Bonus - In 1997 they distinguished between a tech fall without back points (called a match termination) and one with back points (called a tech fall). A match termination was worth 1 team point, while a tech fall was worth 1.5 team points. Today they are all worth 1.5 team points. So, we need to adjust Iowa’s total by adding a half point to any match terminations (foreshadowing – this will get tricky).
    
2. Advancement – In 1997 the tournament was scored as a 64-man bracket whenever there was a pig tail. Not every weight had pigtails though. Today it is always scored as a 32-man bracket with a pigtail. So, what is the difference? In a 64-man bracket everyone who wins a first round match in the championship (or consolation) bracket gets an extra point (or half point). For example, in a 64-man bracket the winner gets 5 advancement points instead of the current 4 points.
    
3. Placement - Placement points for third through eighth place were also different in 1997. We will also need to adjust Iowa’s total for these differences.
    

Putting It All Together

The 1997 Iowa team loses the extra 4.5 advancement points available in their 64-man brackets at 142, 158, 177, 190, and 275. But they get an extra bonus point at 150 as Lincoln McIlravy’s 1-point match terminations become 1.5-point tech falls. They also pick up an extra 5 placement points for their sixth and fifth place finishes.

Adding it all up and 1997 Iowa now has 171.5 points.

That is the real point record PSU needs to shoot for.

[Hammerlock3]

they should cut placement points in half

[Mr. PeanutButter]

I forgot how different the placement points were. Old rules put even more value on finalists. 

 

@Hammerlock3, what's the argument for cutting placement points?

[Wrestleknownothing]

The tricky part that I foreshadowed in the original post:

Match Termination

Finding an accurate bracket has proven trickier than I thought. I have found two sources that have some contradictions between them. One of the sources even has contradictions within the source.

We all know about wrestlingstats and their brackets. They only list two match terminations for the entire tournament, Chris Bono in the quarterfinal at 150 and Joe Williams in the semifinal at 158. But rescoring Iowa using this bracket implies they had three match terminations of their own.

Northern Iowa, where the tournament was hosted, also has the brackets on a website dedicated to the 1997 tournament (https://ncaa-wrestling.uni.edu/). That website has Lincoln McIlravy winning round 2 by match termination based on a score of 24-8. This site also has match descriptions. The description for this match reads, “McIlravey of Iowa got 10 takedowns and 1 reversal to to score a technical fall over Jason Peters”. So, we have a misspelling, a typo, and a claim it was a tech fall, but the 10 TD plus one reversal suggest it was a match termination (assuming an escape and a riding point). That gives us one of the missing MT.

The other one is probably McIlravy’s next match. Both wrestlingstats and UNI have him winning 20-5 in their brackets. Wrestlingstats has this as a TF. UNI has nothing. But the UNI match description reads, “#1 seed Lincoln McIlravy of Iowa scored 10 points over Tim Harshaw of Virgina in the first round. The final score of the match was 21-5 in favor of the Hawkeye McIlravy”. Assuming they meant 10 take downs rather than 10 points then maybe this is our other missing MT. The extra point in the description also makes sense if it was a riding time point. So, it was either a 21-5 tech fall, a 20-5 tech fall, a 21-5 MT, or a 20-5 MT.

Treating both of McIlravy’s 15-point wins as match terminations, rather than tech falls, gets us to the magic 170 point total.

[Hammerlock3]

39 minutes ago, Mr. PeanutButter said:

I forgot how different the placement points were. Old rules put even more value on finalists. 

 

@Hammerlock3, what's the argument for cutting placement points?

sorry that was a bit of an aside. In my opinion it would make the team race a lot better. It would give a boost to balanced teams as opposed to half your lineup scoring all of your points which is currently how certain people are winning. It would also increase the importance of bonus points. 

[Wrestleknownothing]

12 minutes ago, Hammerlock3 said:

sorry that was a bit of an aside. In my opinion it would make the team race a lot better. It would give a boost to balanced teams as opposed to half your lineup scoring all of your points which is currently how certain people are winning. It would also increase the importance of bonus points. 

Placement points have been decreased in value without pause since the beginning of NCAA wrestling.

First, with advancement points added in 1955.

Then again when bonus points were added in 1972. Bonus points have been increasing in importance since they were first introduced until they got to their current configuration in 2016.

And within placement points, first and second have been devalued the most. They used to be worth as much as 89% of all points available, now they are not even worth 42% of placement points alone.

It has always been the case that a team can win with a small number of wrestlers doing very well, it is just harder now than it has ever been to do that.

[Hammerlock3]

2 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Placement points have been decreased in value without pause since the beginning of NCAA wrestling.

First, with advancement points added in 1955.

Then again when bonus points were added in 1972. Bonus points have been increasing in importance since they were first introduced until they got to their current configuration in 2016.

And within placement points, first and second have been devalued the most. They used to be worth as much as 89% of all points available, now they are not even worth 42% of placement points alone.

It has always been the case that a team can win with a small number of wrestlers doing very well, it is just harder now than it has ever been to do that.

yeah....lower them again.

[gimpeltf]

https://www.wrestlingstats.com/ncaa/pdf/brackets/NCAA 1997.pdf

McIlravy's both had to be techs. 20-5 guarantees near fall points. 24-8 pretty much does also. Subtract a max of 4 penalty points and you're way over  get 2 give 1. And I don't believe there was that much stalling going on. I can't remember the caution penalty sequence but they're both techs.

The 20-5 ended in 5:28 so no rt. 5 escapes - 1 in whichever period he was down.  The other 4 would have been from tds or rev. Then there could be at most 3 other period ending tds. That's way short of 20.

150 Bono Rd of 16

158 Williams 1/4s

Do you have your spreadsheet I could look at? Maybe I'll remember something. IIRC this was the first event that we put brackets up on the internet semi-live. I would post a bracket file to some network directory and it would chew it up. I never looked at what they did though.

[Wrestleknownothing]

36 minutes ago, gimpeltf said:

https://www.wrestlingstats.com/ncaa/pdf/brackets/NCAA 1997.pdf

McIlravy's both had to be techs. 20-5 guarantees near fall points. 24-8 pretty much does also. Subtract a max of 4 penalty points and you're way over  get 2 give 1. And I don't believe there was that much stalling going on. I can't remember the caution penalty sequence but they're both techs.

The 20-5 ended in 5:28 so no rt. 5 escapes - 1 in whichever period he was down.  The other 4 would have been from tds or rev. Then there could be at most 3 other period ending tds. That's way short of 20.

150 Bono Rd of 16

158 Williams 1/4s

Do you have your spreadsheet I could look at? Maybe I'll remember something. IIRC this was the first event that we put brackets up on the internet semi-live. I would post a bracket file to some network directory and it would chew it up. I never looked at what they did though.

Lets start with 24-8. The match description was 10 take downs and a reversal. That is 22 points. Say he finished two periods on top. That means only 8 escapes. And with 10 take downs there had to be a riding time point too. Now we are at 23. There are no 1 point back moves. So assuming the match description on the UNI website is accurate, that looks like an MT.

[gimpeltf]

11 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Lets start with 24-8. The match description was 10 take downs and a reversal. That is 22 points. Say he finished two periods on top. That means only 8 escapes. And with 10 take downs there had to be a riding time point too. Now we are at 23. There are no 1 point back moves. So assuming the match description on the UNI website is accurate, that looks like an MT.

There was no rt- didn't go 7 minutes. 5:28.

Do you have some kind of worksheet I could look at?

[Wrestleknownothing]

23 minutes ago, gimpeltf said:

There was no rt- didn't go 7 minutes. 5:28.

Do you have some kind of worksheet I could look at?

Just what I posted in the first post.

One other thing I forgot to mention. The UNI bracket lists it as a match termination.

https://ncaa-wrestling.uni.edu/brackets/150.html

 

[gimpeltf]

12 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Just what I posted in the first post.

One other thing I forgot to mention. The UNI bracket lists it as a match termination.

https://ncaa-wrestling.uni.edu/brackets/150.html

One last time- do you have a worksheet of some sort? This probably is the wrong track to take. Could be cons bye points and/or a penalty point.

[Wrestleknownothing]

5 minutes ago, gimpeltf said:

One last time- do you have a worksheet of some sort? This probably is the wrong track to take. Could be cons bye points and/or a penalty point.

As mentioned in the last post, it is in the original post. But to save you scrolling time, here it is again.

[MPhillips]

5 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

But the real issue is…

Yeoman's work.

Appreciated...

[gimpeltf]

Not worth going back to where my head was or wasn't last night.

I got you now (I hope).

I do now assume the first McIlravy tf/mt is, in fact, an mt as you suggest. I was trying to remember an incident from that tourney and now am sure it was then and about this bout.

I had just printed out a team score and handed it to announcer Sandy Stevens. She must have announced it before I realized. Suddenly one of the Brands (probably Tom) came up to me and said the score was wrong. Eventually I figured out what he meant (I didn't hear her announce it so I didn't understand how he knew). My old tournament software from back then had a parameter I had to set to handle the tf/mt situation. It occurred to me after Tom insisted about the score that I hadn't set the parameter. I think that was only the second year of the rule. So, I'm guessing that wrestlingstats - Jay Hammond- saw the earlier win type and never changed it later.

I'm not sure which of the other two tfs are the other mt but guess Williams since there appear to be more escapes.

For those that might wonder how Brands would handle this- he was very calm but insistent. He waited for me to follow him then went away. I don't think he knew what the score should have been but he or someone else in the Iowa contingent knew that there shouldn't have been a .5.

[MPhillips]

2 hours ago, gimpeltf said:

Not worth going back to where my head was or wasn't last night.

 

Hoping you were going to get through this...

[Wrestleknownothing]

2 hours ago, gimpeltf said:

Not worth going back to where my head was or wasn't last night.

I got you now (I hope).

I do now assume the first McIlravy tf/mt is, in fact, an mt as you suggest. I was trying to remember an incident from that tourney and now am sure it was then and about this bout.

I had just printed out a team score and handed it to announcer Sandy Stevens. She must have announced it before I realized. Suddenly one of the Brands (probably Tom) came up to me and said the score was wrong. Eventually I figured out what he meant (I didn't hear her announce it so I didn't understand how he knew). My old tournament software from back then had a parameter I had to set to handle the tf/mt situation. It occurred to me after Tom insisted about the score that I hadn't set the parameter. I think that was only the second year of the rule. So, I'm guessing that wrestlingstats - Jay Hammond- saw the earlier win type and never changed it later.

I'm not sure which of the other two tfs are the other mt but guess Williams since there appear to be more escapes.

For those that might wonder how Brands would handle this- he was very calm but insistent. He waited for me to follow him then went away. I don't think he knew what the score should have been but he or someone else in the Iowa contingent knew that there shouldn't have been a .5.

Thanks, @gimpeltf. I appreciate the detailed response. Your recollection of events that long ago is absolutely amazing. 

[Dogbone]

I just want to add this is an amazing thread and the work @Wrestleknownothing and @gimpeltf provide is invaluable.

Hopefully, PSU either doesn't top 171.5 or they blow past it and we don't have argue over whether the 3 point TD made it easier for PSU to accumulate bonus points that Iowa didn't get to enjoy in 1997. 

[TylerDurden]

1 minute ago, Dogbone said:

I just want to add this is an amazing thread and the work @Wrestleknownothing and @gimpeltf provide is invaluable.

Hopefully, PSU either doesn't top 171.5 or they blow past it and we don't have argue over whether the 3 point TD made it easier for PSU to accumulate bonus points that Iowa didn't get to enjoy in 1997. 

Agreed. Great work and amazing first-hand memories. 

Dogbone's mention of the takedown scoring brought another thought to my mind about what could (would) be argued: how Division I has condensed since 1997.

We've lost, give or take and by rough count, 25 Division I programs since Iowa won the 1997 title.