2025 NCAA Tournament By The Numbers

Wrestleknownothing · March 13

65 teams, 330 wrestlers, 80 All-Americans, 10 Champions, and 1 Most Outstanding Wrestler.

I am getting tingly all over.

Oh, yeah. And a team title. Let’s just get the team race out of the way right away.

The Highlander - There Can Be Only One

It is Penn State’s to lose…..again. Boring. Well not for me. But for you guys.

What is not boring is the race for second. Wow, did that heat up.

With Iowa’s seed average (9.6) much lower than their ranking average (6.7) going into the conference tournament, Oklahoma State, and Nebraska are firmly in the conversation for second. Feels kinda Thunderdome-y to me. Three Intermat posters enter (@VakAttack, @ionel, @jajensen09), one man leaves.

But do not count Virginia Tech, and Minnesota out as serious podium contenders. Northern Iowa, Cornell, and Illinois may be long shots, but don’t you dare try telling our muse @ILLINIWrestlingBlog that. Rest in Peace, buddy. Just don’t do it on that great big mat in the sky or we will send Jombo up to call the stall in all his ham and vinegar fueled wrath.

Here is hoping your beloved Illini do the deed.

Author’s Note: For the long-time readers in the crowd you know that I come up with these point projections based on how the average wrestler at each seed performs. Well, here is the thing about PSU, they just don’t do average. For example, based on average expectations last year they were projected to score 145 points. And we know what happened. So, yeah, 155.7 this year is more. If you throw in the PSU bump relative to the average, they project out to something like 183. Yep.

Lou Gehrig Award

Who is this year’s Iron Horse? How appropriate that our warrior is a soldier.

Army’s Brady Colbert leads all entrants with 36 wins on the season among his total of 43 matches. The man is a thrown back. And if you aren’t careful, he will throw you to your back. Our hero had 10 pinfalls among his 36 wins. With Wyatt Pinfalldrickson flying into the sunset at the end of the tournament, perhaps we have a new American Hero in the Black Knight freshman.

Is he The One Who Was Promised?

The Harlem Globetrotters Award

The Globetrotters have won 27,000 games. You read that right. They will beat anyone, anywhere, anytime. And Campbell shares that ethos. If Campbell is going out this year, they are doing it in style. The Fighting Camels have the highest average matches contested among their entered wrestlers.

The Outliers

I am not sure what to make of this but there are more wrestlers with sub-0.500 records than with perfect records. Go figure.

Edited March 13 by Wrestleknownothing

Wrestleknownothing · March 13

Adding team specific AA probability distributions here.

If there is one you care about, let me know.

Edited March 13 by Wrestleknownothing

Wrestleknownothing · March 13

This first request goes out to Mean @Gene Mills Fan

Gene Mills Fan · March 13

Thank you it would be great to have 4 teams in th graph with their respective colors to compare! Sorry not giving you tasks but would be a good overall picture instead of separate

and as long as I'm asking maybe one %number of champions same teams

Edited March 13 by Gene Mills Fan

Wrestleknownothing · March 13

9 minutes ago, Gene Mills Fan said:

Thank you it would be great to have 4 teams in th graph with their respective colors to compare! Sorry not giving you tasks but would be a good overall picture instead of separate

and as long as I'm asking maybe one %number of champions same teams

Is this what you want?

Gene Mills Fan · March 13

37 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Is this what you want?

is this AAs or Champions? No ones better than you!! So tell jajensen penn state has over 40% to get 9AAs and Nebraska has 40% chance to get 4AAs And PSU has Twice the chance of getting 9 Champions.

Edited March 13 by Gene Mills Fan

Wrestleknownothing · March 13

22 minutes ago, Gene Mills Fan said:

is this AAs or Champions? No ones better than you!! So tell jajensen penn state has over 40% to get 9AAs and Nebraska has 40% chance to get 4AAs And PSU has Twice the chance of getting 9 Champions.

He knows

Husker_Du · March 13

the color coding really takes this to the next level, WKN

BarSeries · March 13

Poop brown Lehigh for the win

Wrestleknownothing · March 13

16 minutes ago, Husker_Du said:

the color coding really takes this to the next level, WKN

Thanks, I found a website with all the hex codes. Now I have a new way to waste even more time.

https://teamcolorcodes.com/ncaa-color-codes/

Wrestleknownothing · March 13

Something that was requested on HR that I thought I would share here

Last 10 year, At least 40 wrestlers, How teams perform relative to seed

Red=Worse Than Seed
Green = Better Than Seed
Grey = At Seed

Wrestleknownothing · March 13

An oldie but a goodie

Pablo · March 13

Quote

Author’s Note: For the long-time readers in the crowd you know that I come up with these point projections based on how the average wrestler at each seed performs.

Lots of data here, but I will just note that like this methodology. I've spent a lot of time analyzing outcomes-by-seeds in other places (specifically basketball) and understand your basis.

In the future it could be possible to run this with Pablo rankings, and I can easily do that for the winner's bracket but when it gets to the consolation side, it gets really complicated. I know guys that have just done it via a monte carlo simulation to get a statistical result. If it is just the championship side, I can do it analytically.

Wrestleknownothing · March 13

4 minutes ago, Pablo said:

Lots of data here, but I will just note that like this methodology. I've spent a lot of time analyzing outcomes-by-seeds in other places (specifically basketball) and understand your basis.

In the future it could be possible to run this with Pablo rankings, and I can easily do that for the winner's bracket but when it gets to the consolation side, it gets really complicated. I know guys that have just done it via a monte carlo simulation to get a statistical result. If it is just the championship side, I can do it analytically.

I do some fitting in two directions around the data, rather than just using it in its raw form. For example here is my current fitted AA probability by seed. I will update again after this tournie.

Pablo · March 13

What the heck is the explanation for that bump at 27 - 30? Is that a matchup issue in that if they win the first round they have an easier path to AA? Or are there wrestlers who get thrown into those seeds for non-seeding purposes?

You clearly have enough data here, that's real.

Wrestleknownothing · March 13

2 minutes ago, Pablo said:

What the heck is the explanation for that bump at 27 - 30? Is that a matchup issue in that if they win the first round they have an easier path to AA? Or are there wrestlers who get thrown into those seeds for non-seeding purposes?

You clearly have enough data here, that's real.

It is a bit of an artifact of the fitting in that it is mostly driven by performance of the 26 seed, but it get pulled to the right a bit during fitting. There have been four #26 seeds make the podium in the 5 years where the whole field is seeded.

As more tournaments with 33 seeds go by, I expect that to smooth out a bit. But right now with only 5 tournaments seeded to 16, and 5 seeded to 33, I muddle along.

There is evidence in the data that the seeding committee is generally accurate. The shift in results when going from 16 to 33 seeds bears it out.