D2 and D3 commentary

[Pablo]

Does anyone have any comments about the D2 and D3 regional qualifiers last weekend?  The good, the bad, the surprises, things worth noting?

The only thing I saw that is worth mentioning is that D2 #1 at 141 Cayden Hentschel from Wisc-Parkside crashed and burned in Super Region V, and won't be going to nationals.  Parkside guys on the whole underwhelmed.

What happened in D3?  Wartburg have any success?

PS I am obliged to say Wart Sucks.

 

[Tom formerly Tofurky]

Two-time finalist and 2023 National Champ from Glenville State, Gavin Quiocho, wasn't in the line-up this past weekend. His coach, former WVU NQ Dylan Cottrell, claimed that he struggled to make 133 AND that he lost wrestle-offs to the 141 who took sixth at Super Region III.

UW-Parkside took it on the chin from 133 to 157. Then again, that SR might be the toughest in D2, if not the second toughest. Coach Becker has to be feeling the results this morning.

New Jersey's brand new program, Felician, qualified two to the tournament. Congrats!

American International had their final qualifier this year at 157. Sad to see the program fold.

University of Nebraska-Kearney had a GREAT second half of the season and look mighty strong heading into Nationals.

Can three-time finalist and 2024 National Champ at 197, Derek Blubaugh from University of Indianapolis, make a fourth finals? First, it was Abney from Central Oklahoma who had his number, and now it may be Logan Kvien of McKendree. Either way, Blubaugh is a monster and a great kid to boot.

Congratulations to the 50 teams that qualified at least one guy to the tournament in two weekends!

With six-plus teams coming to D2 in the next few seasons, the NCAA might want to look at the structure of the Super Regions. You now have three really strong ones and three SRs which aren't as competitive. The coaches want the BEST kids at the tournament, just like in D1, and not just regional representation.

[cowcards]

It's not regional qualifiers, but I'll be out at D3 Champs tweeting out stats and data live. Should be a great time and can't wait. 

(I'll also be out at the women's NCWWC championship this weekend doing the same thing.)

You can follow me on Bluesky

[flyingcement]

D2 Gannon has quite a few transfers from D1 so I was following them a bit:

125: Logan Sallot who spent his redshirt year at Lock Haven, has qualified for nationals (lost in sudden victory in his regional final, but won his first two matches)

149: 4th year college wrestler (freshman year at Army West Point) Kenny Kiser is a first time starter for Gannon and has qualified for nationals after getting into the finals and medically forfeiting that match.  

174: Patrick Jackson who spent his redshirt year at Lock Haven won regionals and qualified for nationals

285: Dorian Crosby looks like he won his region and will be headed to nationals as expected.  He was a R16 guy in D1 last year.  

[Pablo]

3 hours ago, Tom formerly Tofurky said:

re of the Super Regions. You now have three really strong ones and three SRs which aren't as competitive. The coaches want the BEST kids at the tournament, just like in D1, and not just regional representation.

I'm not familiar with the D2 wrestling scene all that much - is there as much of a regional distortion in wrestling quality as there is in, for example, volleyball?  In volleyball they run 8 regions, but 2 of them have like 7 teams in the top 20, and then there are those with maybe 1 team in the top 20, one other top 40 and the rest are below 80.

They insist on regionalizing the tournament, but the quality of teams is not evenly distributed, and it's not even close.  And it's even worse in D3, where there are a huge number of teams in the northeast part of the country and most of them stink it up.

It's hard to get a good assessment of the national landscape in wrestling in the other divisions, for starters because it's really hard to find results.

 

[Tom formerly Tofurky]

I'm intimately familiar with the D3 log jam in the two Midwest qualifiers, though I don't know how it shook out with the addition of the seventh one this year.

Ranked teams in each D2 Super Region (per the most recent NWCA Coach's rankings)

SR1 - 15, 16, 17

SR2 - 12, T18

SR3 - 5, 6, 8, 10, T13, 21

SR4 - 4, 7, 20, 22, T24

SR5 - 1, 2, 3, 9, 11, T24

SR6 - T13, T18, 23, T24

SR3 came on big this season when Glenville pulled a lot of transfers, and Simcoe at Grand Valley is building a nice, little program in Western Michigan to add to stalwarts West Liberty, Tiffin, Lake Erie, et al.

SR4 is having a bit of an off year, but the usual suspects of UCO, McKendree, and UIndy are there, along with a resurging CMSU program, run by D2 legend Cody Garcia (with some help behind the scenes from wrestling legend Mike Denney).

SR5 is SR5... that is THE meat grinder of D2 year over year. 

Edited Tuesday at 03:35 AM by Tom formerly Tofurky
Clarification re: D2 SRs

[Tom formerly Tofurky]

17 hours ago, Pablo said:

They insist on regionalizing the tournament, but the quality of teams is not evenly distributed, and it's not even close.  And it's even worse in D3, where there are a huge number of teams in the northeast part of the country and most of them stink it up.

It's hard to get a good assessment of the national landscape in wrestling in the other divisions, for starters because it's really hard to find results.

 

Regionalizing the tournament makes sense for small schools with small athletics budgets.

It's important to remember that most of these schools are enrollment driven and most that recently added sports (including wrestling) did so to bring in tuition revenue. If a school has only 20 to 25 people on their roster, their team budget is going to be tiny, unless the coach can fund raise like no one else or the program is fully endowed, which very few are.

One crazy aspect of D3 is that out of more than 130 programs at this time, only five of them are west of the line where Canada meets Minnesota on the western edge of the state, all the way down to Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. Of those five, Oregon has two on their west coast, and there isn't another one east of there until you hit eastern Nebraska. Check out this map: https://content.nwcaonline.com/where-to-wrestle-2/#/qbe/map

For MOST results (Track and Flo will be merging platforms in the not-too-distant future), you can go here: https://www.trackwrestling.com/tw/seasons/index.jsp?TIM=1741116886512&twSessionId=sgwitzolqu - click on the season you want to review, find the team for which you want results, then play around in there.

[CHROMEBIRD]

5 minutes ago, Tom formerly Tofurky said:

One crazy aspect of D3 is that out of more than 130 programs at this time, only five of them are west of the line where Canada meets Minnesota on the western edge of the state, all the way down to Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. Of those five, Oregon has two on their west coast, and there isn't another one east of there until you hit eastern Nebraska. Check out this map: https://content.nwcaonline.com/where-to-wrestle-2/#/qbe/map

Wow, that's a pretty huge vacuum out west, and the D2 map doesn't look much better. Not to hijack the topic but it's sad to see that outside of club sports, there are zero opportunities to wrestle in college in the state of Nevada. Idaho and New Mexico have 1 each. Montana and Utah, 2. Arizona and Wyoming, 3.

[flyingcement]

Joziah Fry who once wrestled for Cambell is going for his third straight D3 title at 125.

Massoma Endene who had temporarily transferred to Wisconsin before returning back to Wartburg is also going for his third title at 197.  

Hunter Mays who went from Rider to Lehigh to TCNJ has qualified for Nationals at 174 also in D3

[Pablo]

1 hour ago, Tom formerly Tofurky said:

 

For MOST results (Track and Flo will be merging platforms in the not-too-distant future), you can go here: https://www.trackwrestling.com/tw/seasons/index.jsp?TIM=1741116886512&twSessionId=sgwitzolqu - click on the season you want to review, find the team for which you want results, then play around in there.

Ooo, this is very useful for me.  I can slog through that pretty well.

Now how about this:  what if I want to find results not so much by team or by event, but by date?  Like ALL the results on a given day?  Is there a way in trac to do that?  Or anywhere?

But this is certainly a good start for me.  Thanks a ton!

 

[Tom formerly Tofurky]

1 hour ago, Pablo said:

Ooo, this is very useful for me.  I can slog through that pretty well.

Now how about this:  what if I want to find results not so much by team or by event, but by date?  Like ALL the results on a given day?  Is there a way in trac to do that?  Or anywhere?

But this is certainly a good start for me.  Thanks a ton!

 

Yep, go to Events, Functions, Search, add in a date time frame and hit search.

If you want it for a specific level, do those same things, but before you hit search, click on Advanced, then scroll to Age Level and choose your poison.

Good luck searching!

[cowcards]

Wrestlestat also has D2 and D3 results. I don't think it has all of them, but it looks like it has most of them. Really have expanded.

[Pablo]

16 hours ago, Tom formerly Tofurky said:

Yep, go to Events, Functions, Search, add in a date time frame and hit search.

If you want it for a specific level, do those same things, but before you hit search, click on Advanced, then scroll to Age Level and choose your poison.

Good luck searching!

Thanks for your help.  Yeah, I can find by events like that (and thanks for the tip on using an advanced search to get to the NCAA), but when I go to the events themselves, to get the results in the same format as when I check teams, I have to either choose a round or a weight.  OK, so 10 weight classes or who knows how many rounds.  Grrrrr....I just want the whole tournament!

Going through the teams search, I can find all the matches for wrestlers for a selected team at the tournament, but now I am doing it team by team.

There has to be a better way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ugh.