Last chance tournament

[forkemaz]

On 2/12/2024 at 2:05 PM, Wrestleknownothing said:

 

The back ups are there to be fodder for the starters who need to up the match count or win %. In the past Dresser has arranged the brackets so that starters do not hit until late in the bracket, even though this is blatantly against the rules. 

Wouldn't seeding naturally do this anyways? I guess I don't understand.

[Wrestleknownothing]

9 minutes ago, forkemaz said:

Wouldn't seeding naturally do this anyways? I guess I don't understand.

Seeding would often do the opposite. The top guys would get first round byes in unbalanced brackets. But in this tournament they don't want a bye, they want an easy first round match. So, Dresser was arranging it so that his guys got easy first round matches. NCAA rules are clear that you cannot do this, but it was done anyway, and no one really cared all that much.

[Caveira]

Does this happen under the old ncaa qualification rules?   I don’t think it does.   

[ionel]

22 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Any idea why?

no fodder?  

[forkemaz]

3 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Seeding would often do the opposite. The top guys would get first round byes in unbalanced brackets. But in this tournament they don't want a bye, they want an easy first round match. So, Dresser was arranging it so that his guys got easy first round matches. NCAA rules are clear that you cannot do this, but it was done anyway, and no one really cared all that much.

So you're complaining about one match? Presumably after the first round the brackets would run as normal unless the seeds were totally ***ducked** right? The top guys should still hit in quarters, semis and finals.  

[Wrestleknownothing]

4 minutes ago, forkemaz said:

So you're complaining about one match? Presumably after the first round the brackets would run as normal unless the seeds were totally ***ducked** right? The top guys should still hit in quarters, semis and finals.  

Not at all. As a matter of fact nothing I said is a complaint. It was just statements of fact.

The finals and sometimes the semis never happened at this tournament because that was not the point of the tournament. The point was to get a few teams' starters extra matches against back ups so that they could meet the minimum match requirements with near guaranteed wins that would pump up their win percentage.

A typical starter who enters this tournament has something like 13 or 14 matches and a 60 something win percentage. Once they get to 15 matches and 70%, they stop wrestling.

[jdalu75]

Davidson's tournament is limited to 120 wrestlers, no high school entries which I didn't think a school could do anymore and still call it an Open.

 

[Wrestleknownothing]

@forkemaz, to understand just how cynical The Last Chance Open has been, you only need to look at Coleman Scott circa 2020.

He was 5-5 on the season at 184 prior to Last Chance Open. He then "won" the 184 title by going 4-0 after "wrestling" for 5 seconds. He also had one dual left to get him to the 15 bout minimum.

At 184 there were 15 bouts scheduled, but only 6 were wrestled. Four were forfeits and five were injury defaults. Coleman was the beneficiary of four of those five injury defaults. Three of the four injury defaults were received from his teammates. Two of those teammates wrestled the entire year at 174, but bumped up to 184 in time to injury default to Coleman.

Dresser also admitted that he arranged the brackets so that Coleman would be guaranteed four injury defaults (an NCAA rule violation).

Dresser held a total of five starters out of the Missouri dual so that they could "wrestle" at this open instead. 

Carr wrestled one match at The Last Chance (against a teammate) so that he could satisfy the one match in the last 30 days requirement.

It was the most cynical abuse of the rules anyone had ever seen.

[ionel]

5 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

@forkemaz, to understand just how cynical The Last Chance Open has been, you only need to look at Coleman Scott circa 2020.

He was 5-5 on the season at 184 prior to Last Chance Open. He then "won" the 184 title by going 4-0 after "wrestling" for 5 seconds. 

I'd call that comical.  But thats just me. 

[forkemaz]

1 hour ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Not at all. As a matter of fact nothing I said is a complaint. It was just statements of fact.

The finals and sometimes the semis never happened at this tournament because that was not the point of the tournament. The point was to get a few teams' starters extra matches against back ups so that they could meet the minimum match requirements with near guaranteed wins that would pump up their win percentage.

A typical starter who enters this tournament has something like 13 or 14 matches and a 60 something win percentage. Once they get to 15 matches and 70%, they stop wrestling.

That's a legitimate  concern and also gross. The ugly gamesmanship of wrestling is... well ugly.

[SetonHallPirate]

1 hour ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

@forkemaz, to understand just how cynical The Last Chance Open has been, you only need to look at Coleman Scott circa 2020.

He was 5-5 on the season at 184 prior to Last Chance Open. He then "won" the 184 title by going 4-0 after "wrestling" for 5 seconds. He also had one dual left to get him to the 15 bout minimum.

At 184 there were 15 bouts scheduled, but only 6 were wrestled. Four were forfeits and five were injury defaults. Coleman was the beneficiary of four of those five injury defaults. Three of the four injury defaults were received from his teammates. Two of those teammates wrestled the entire year at 174, but bumped up to 184 in time to injury default to Coleman.

Dresser also admitted that he arranged the brackets so that Coleman would be guaranteed four injury defaults (an NCAA rule violation).

Dresser held a total of five starters out of the Missouri dual so that they could "wrestle" at this open instead. 

Carr wrestled one match at The Last Chance (against a teammate) so that he could satisfy the one match in the last 30 days requirement.

It was the most cynical abuse of the rules anyone had ever seen.

Marcus Coleman. Kevin Dresser would’ve been extremely interested to know that he had a former national champion for Oklahoma State on his roster, while he was also simultaneously the head coach at North Carolina!

[Wrestleknownothing]

7 minutes ago, SetonHallPirate said:

Marcus Coleman. Kevin Dresser would’ve been extremely interested to know that he had a former national champion for Oklahoma State on his roster, while he was also simultaneously the head coach at North Carolina!

Oops.

[ionel]

12 minutes ago, SetonHallPirate said:

Marcus Coleman. Kevin Dresser would’ve been extremely interested to know that he had a former national champion for Oklahoma State on his roster, while he was also simultaneously the head coach at North Carolina!

I found his weight issue interesting.  

[1032004]

3 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Not at all. As a matter of fact nothing I said is a complaint. It was just statements of fact.

The finals and sometimes the semis never happened at this tournament because that was not the point of the tournament. The point was to get a few teams' starters extra matches against back ups so that they could meet the minimum match requirements with near guaranteed wins that would pump up their win percentage.

A typical starter who enters this tournament has something like 13 or 14 matches and a 60 something win percentage. Once they get to 15 matches and 70%, they stop wrestling.

2020 was the bad year.  It was a legit tournament in 2022 and 2023.   In both years there was only one MFF in the finals and last year it was because it was 2 teammates.

There were also some solid redshirts and a few top HS guys that attended as well. 2022 149 looks to be the strongest bracket and had 5 guys that are or would be ranked this year:  Caleb Rathjen (champ), Paniro Johnson, Tagen Jamison, Drew Roberts and Blaine Brenner

[Wrestleknownothing]

3 minutes ago, 1032004 said:

2020 was the bad year.  It was a legit tournament in 2022 and 2023.   In both years there was only one MFF in the finals and last year it was because it was 2 teammates.

There were also some solid redshirts and a few top HS guys that attended as well. 2022 149 looks to be the strongest bracket and had 5 guys that are or would be ranked this year:  Caleb Rathjen (champ), Paniro Johnson, Tagen Jamison, Drew Roberts and Blaine Brenner

Certainly 22 and 23 were legit. I aasume that is as a result of the blowback Dresser received after 20. He even went on FRL to answer questions about it.

[1032004]

5 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Certainly 22 and 23 were legit. I aasume that is as a result of the blowback Dresser received after 20. He even went on FRL to answer questions about it.

Correct, and it also resulted in the rule changes about matches against teammates and that injury defaults had to have “actual wrestling,” although the latter one still seems up for interpretation.

But while 2020 was certainly shady, I’m not sure if there were any rules violations that could be easily proven. The best argument was probably for match fixing, but would be hard to prove unless someone admitted it.  Even the seeding I don’t believe would have been against the rules if all the coaches agreed to them. 

[Wrestleknownothing]

6 minutes ago, 1032004 said:

Correct, and it also resulted in the rule changes about matches against teammates and that injury defaults had to have “actual wrestling,” although the latter one still seems up for interpretation.

But while 2020 was certainly shady, I’m not sure if there were any rules violations that could be easily proven. The best argument was probably for match fixing, but would be hard to prove unless someone admitted it.  Even the seeding I don’t believe would have been against the rules if all the coaches agreed to them. 

That last part was the illegal part that he admitted to on FRL. There is nothing in the rule about coaches agreeing making it peemissable.

[1032004]

6 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

That last part was the illegal part that he admitted to on FRL. There is nothing in the rule about coaches agreeing making it peemissable.

I remember watching the episode (and his Stalemates interview) but don’t recall the specifics.  I thought he claimed he didn’t technically do anything against the rules but may be misremembering.

[Wrestleknownothing]

2 minutes ago, 1032004 said:

I remember watching the episode (and his Stalemates interview) but don’t recall the specifics.  I thought he claimed he didn’t technically do anything against the rules but may be misremembering.

As I recall it, which may be imperfect, they asked him if he decided who got first round byes and he said he arranged it so his guys got enough matches.

The rule I think he broke is this:

Tournaments may use alternate methods for assigning byes in the first round of a tournament, as long as byes and/or resulting first-round pigtail matches are distributed randomly and no institution is unfairly helped or 
harmed by the resulting assignment.

[jdalu75]

In the end it didn't matter because the 2020 NCAA tournament was canceled.  All it did was demolish Dresser's reputation.

 

[Kov88]

Looking at the teams I thought it was about to be a decent tournament, until I saw ppl comment mostly backups with no decent matchups

[Fadzaev2]

On 2/14/2024 at 6:15 PM, SetonHallPirate said:

Marcus Coleman. Kevin Dresser would’ve been extremely interested to know that he had a former national champion for Oklahoma State on his roster, while he was also simultaneously the head coach at North Carolina!

A lot of difference in weight as well.

[Show_Me]

On 2/14/2024 at 8:46 PM, jdalu75 said:

In the end it didn't matter because the 2020 NCAA tournament was canceled.  All it did was demolish Dresser's reputation.

+1

[ionel]

On 2/14/2024 at 6:23 PM, Wrestleknownothing said:

As I recall it, which may be imperfect, they asked him if he decided who got first round byes and he said he arranged it so his guys got enough matches.

The rule I think he broke is this:

Tournaments may use alternate methods for assigning byes in the first round of a tournament, as long as byes and/or resulting first-round pigtail matches are distributed randomly and no institution is unfairly helped or 
harmed by the resulting assignment.

But how do you prove it wasnt random?  Sure we may not have liked it but appears no proof it was against the rules.

Edited February 26 by ionel

[Wrestleknownothing]

5 minutes ago, ionel said:

But how do you prove it wasnt random?  Sure we may not have liked it but appears no proof it was against the rules.

With Dresser's words.