Nebraska Wins The Title That Really Matters

[Wrestleknownothing]

Nebraska outperformed expectations by the most.

We didn't really need the math to know this. If you had eyes to see... But now we can assign a number to it. And you know it means nothing to me without a number assigned to it.

Observations:

• Nebraska beat their expected points by a whopping 62%. Not the highest, but anyone with a higher % had a much lower starting point.
• All four podium teams outperformed their expectations. As it should be. In addition to Nebraska, Oklahoma State beat by 38%, PSU beat by 14%, and Iowa beat by 6%.
• After North Carolina State had possibly the worst tournament ever in 2024, they bounce back nicely in 2025 to beat their expectations by 60%. Call it the Hoagie Hidlay Bump.
• Anyone who was in the Dark Horse Derby is not surprised to see Indiana and Northwestern near the top of the outperformers list.
• On the other end, Virginia Tech has to be a little disappointed this morning. But as underperformance goes, it was not that extreme.
• Overall, teams scored 21.5 fewer points than my expectations, an average of about 0.3 points per team. Not too bad for the model.

 

[Wrestleknownothing]

And for @BruceyB, I ballparked it and came up with the "PSU Bump Included Total" of ~183. Based on that PSU underperformed PSU by 6 points. The calls for Sanderson's head are real.

Edited Monday at 02:50 PM by Wrestleknownothing

[okokzach]

Surprised that Northern Iowa underperformed so much. They seemed to be clicking at conferences

[Xmas32]

  On 3/24/2025 at 2:55 PM, okokzach said:

Surprised that Northern Iowa underperformed so much. They seemed to be clicking at conferences

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I saw their gambling line was 2.5 AAs. I really thought they would've snagged one more between Downey/Realbuto/Voelker.

[Wrestleknownothing]

  On 3/24/2025 at 2:55 PM, okokzach said:

Surprised that Northern Iowa underperformed so much. They seemed to be clicking at conferences

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I was pulling for them to make the podium. They were headed in that direction mid-season, but began to fall off the pace late.

[Dogbone]

It doesn't help VT that Henson made the finals with no bonuses and then lost a close one.  I wouldn't say underachieved.

Interesting fact to me at least:   

Caleb Henson made the finals and lost 1-0.  He scored less team points than 7 of the PSU wrestlers.   

All but three of the 3rd place finishers (Bassett, Ramos, and AJ) scored more points than Henson.

[Wrestleknownothing]

  On 3/24/2025 at 4:18 PM, Dogbone said:

It doesn't help VT that Henson made the finals with no bonuses and then lost a close one.  I wouldn't say underachieved.

Interesting fact to me at least:   

Caleb Henson made the finals and lost 1-0.  He scored less team points than 7 of the PSU wrestlers.   

All but three of the 3rd place finishers (Bassett, Ramos, and AJ) scored more points than Henson.

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The expected points for a 1 seed is 19.7 including bonus. He scored 16, so he was only -3.7 of the -23.8 points.

Most costly was Rafael Hipolito. As a 4 seed he is expected to score 11.4 points rather than the 1 he scored. 

Edited Monday at 04:28 PM by Wrestleknownothing

[BruceyB]

  On 3/24/2025 at 2:50 PM, Wrestleknownothing said:

And for @BruceyB, I ballparked it and came up with the "PSU Bump Included Total" of ~183. Based on that PSU underperformed PSU by 6 points. The calls for Sanderson's head are real.

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Friday night I mistakenly used PSU's wrestling to seed statistic when I should have just used their semi-final winning percentage. IIRC your stats had them 52-10 in the semis during the Cael era?

[Wrestleknownothing]

  On 3/24/2025 at 5:54 PM, BruceyB said:

Friday night I mistakenly used PSU's wrestling to seed statistic when I should have just used their semi-final winning percentage. IIRC your stats had them 52-10 in the semis during the Cael era?

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They were 51-10 (83.6%) going in. 40-2 (95.2%) when the higher seed, and 11-8 (57.9%) when the lower seed.

They went 3-4 (42.9%). 2-2 when the higher seed (50%) and 1-2 when the lower seed (33.3%).

They offset that poor performance by going 17-3 in the consolation bracket, including 5-0 in third place matches.

[BruceyB]

  On 3/24/2025 at 7:20 PM, Wrestleknownothing said:

They offset that poor performance by going 17-3 in the consolation bracket, including 5-0 in third place matches.

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There is no doubt about that.

[Richferg]

  On 3/24/2025 at 7:20 PM, Wrestleknownothing said:

They offset that poor performance by going 17-3 in the consolation bracket, including 5-0 in third place matches.

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Even more impressive when you consider they only “lost” 1 match. A healthy Kerk and they might have gone 19 - 1. 

[Quaker118]

  On 3/24/2025 at 2:42 PM, Wrestleknownothing said:

Nebraska outperformed expectations by the most.

We didn't really need the math to know this. If you had eyes to see... But now we can assign a number to it. And you know it means nothing to me without a number assigned to it.

Observations:

• Nebraska beat their expected points by a whopping 62%. Not the highest, but anyone with a higher % had a much lower starting point.
• All four podium teams outperformed their expectations. As it should be. In addition to Nebraska, Oklahoma State beat by 38%, PSU beat by 14%, and Iowa beat by 6%.
• After North Carolina State had possibly the worst tournament ever in 2024, they bounce back nicely in 2025 to beat their expectations by 60%. Call it the Hoagie Hidlay Bump.
• Anyone who was in the Dark Horse Derby is not surprised to see Indiana and Northwestern near the top of the outperformers list.
• On the other end, Virginia Tech has to be a little disappointed this morning. But as underperformance goes, it was not that extreme.
• Overall, teams scored 21.5 fewer points than my expectations, an average of about 0.3 points per team. Not too bad for the model.

 

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Penn’s expected points based on seed was 9.5 and they scored 26.5. Where did you get 20.8? 

[Wrestleknownothing]

  On 3/24/2025 at 10:33 PM, Quaker118 said:

Penn’s expected points based on seed was 9.5 and they scored 26.5. Where did you get 20.8? 

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I am using "expected" in the statistical/probabilistic sense of the word, rather than the binary way Flo or Intermat uses it.

They both assume a #1 seed will finish first and a #9 seed will never earn placement points. I do not. Instead I use the history of the seeds to come up with probabilities. For example, a #1 seed only wins about 45% of the time and a #9 seed makes AA about 42% of the time. I recognize those facts in my calculations. 

I also include expected bonus points in my calculations.

The result is that a #1 seed is expected to score 19.7 points on average, including bonus (versus 20 plus bonus done the binary way) and a #9 seed is expected to score 5.6 points (versus 2 in a binary model).

I wind up giving the top 8 seeds less credit than the binary models, and the bottom 25 seeds more.

For Penn it looked like this:

Edited Monday at 10:53 PM by Wrestleknownothing

[Rassling2]

 

Hey Flo, put this guy on your payroll, and pay him what ever the eff he wants. Incredible analysis wrestle…seriously. You should send this to Nebraskas coaching staff. 

[Doublehalf]

Always great info wrestleknownothing, I enjoy all the analysis you bring as others have mentioned above.

That being said, what's happened with Iowa St this year? Seemed like they were going to have a decent year... Are they missing that many point scorers from their lineup? Was just surprised to see how far down the list they were.

[Wrestleknownothing]

  On 3/24/2025 at 11:16 PM, Doublehalf said:

Always great info wrestleknownothing, I enjoy all the analysis you bring as others have mentioned above.

That being said, what's happened with Iowa St this year? Seemed like they were going to have a decent year... Are they missing that many point scorers from their lineup? Was just surprised to see how far down the list they were.

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Just tough performances across the board. Paniro Johnson going out in the round of 16 as the 4 seed hurt the most. But with only 2 of 8 wrestlers outperforming their seed, they were doomed. Especially since one of the outperformers was a 30 seed who won two consolation matches and scored 2 points.

[MPhillips]

  On 3/25/2025 at 12:17 AM, Wrestleknownothing said:

Paniro Johnson going out in the round of 16 as the 4 seed hurt the most.

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Especially if you drafted him...

[BruceyB]

  On 3/24/2025 at 10:49 PM, Wrestleknownothing said:

I am using "expected" in the statistical/probabilistic sense of the word, rather than the binary way Flo or Intermat uses it.

They both assume a #1 seed will finish first and a #9 seed will never earn placement points. I do not. Instead I use the history of the seeds to come up with probabilities. For example, a #1 seed only wins about 45% of the time and a #9 seed makes AA about 42% of the time. I recognize those facts in my calculations. 

I also include expected bonus points in my calculations.

The result is that a #1 seed is expected to score 19.7 points on average, including bonus (versus 20 plus bonus done the binary way) and a #9 seed is expected to score 5.6 points (versus 2 in a binary model).

I wind up giving the top 8 seeds less credit than the binary models, and the bottom 25 seeds more.

For Penn it looked like this:

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The fact that you have a much more sophisticated model than our top wrestling organizations is truly astounding.

[flyingcement]

  On 3/25/2025 at 5:44 AM, BruceyB said:

The fact that you have a much more sophisticated model than our top wrestling organizations is truly astounding.

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we are lucky to have him here honestly

[RockLobster]

  On 3/25/2025 at 5:44 AM, BruceyB said:

The fact that you have a much more sophisticated model than our top wrestling organizations is truly astounding.

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EXCEPT for the elephant in the room.

WKN's model is all based on seedings/rankings.

Guess what?

• The model is the easier part.
• The rankings/seedings are the much harder part.

The most sophisticated part is lining the wrestlers up in ranked order. That takes years of knowledge and experience to even being to start. Much more to do it well.

If you're really good at it - you can afford to get yourself a place at Coeur d'Alene!

[D3 for LU]

  On 3/25/2025 at 8:51 AM, RockLobster said:

EXCEPT for the elephant in the room.

WKN's model is all based on seedings/rankings.

Guess what?

• The model is the easier part.
• The rankings/seedings are the much harder part.

The most sophisticated part is lining the wrestlers up in ranked order. That takes years of knowledge and experience to even being to start. Much more to do it well.

If you're really good at it - you can afford to get yourself a place at Coeur d'Alene!

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For those who are scratching their heads over Coeur d'Alene...

https://coeurdalene.org/

D3

[BruceyB]

  On 3/25/2025 at 8:51 AM, RockLobster said:

EXCEPT for the elephant in the room.

WKN's model is all based on seedings/rankings.

Guess what?

• The model is the easier part.
• The rankings/seedings are the much harder part.

The most sophisticated part is lining the wrestlers up in ranked order. That takes years of knowledge and experience to even being to start. Much more to do it well.

If you're really good at it - you can afford to get yourself a place at Coeur d'Alene!

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EXCEPT for.. I was talking about predicting team scores in March.

And I don't think ranking is really all that difficult. The websites that publish their own rankings obviously have the time and resources to be thorough in knowing the relevant starters for 70ish or so teams. They start with last years results and then shuffle guys around based on the results the following year. Seeding is even easier because they literally just put numbers into a matrix and it seeds the wrestlers and the seeding committee can make slight adjustments where they see it necessary.

[BruceyB]

  On 3/25/2025 at 9:50 AM, D3 for LU said:

For those who are scratching their heads over Coeur d'Alene...

https://coeurdalene.org/

D3

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I didn't realize doing college rankings was such a lucrative business.

[RockLobster]

  On 3/25/2025 at 5:19 PM, BruceyB said:

EXCEPT for.. I was talking about predicting team scores in March.

And I don't think ranking is really all that difficult. The websites that publish their own rankings obviously have the time and resources to be thorough in knowing the relevant starters for 70ish or so teams. They start with last years results and then shuffle guys around based on the results the following year. Seeding is even easier because they literally just put numbers into a matrix and it seeds the wrestlers and the seeding committee can make slight adjustments where they see it necessary.

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EXCEPT for... I was, too.

Rankings don't seem all that difficult when someone else is doing them for you.
(Air conditioning is simple, too. As long as you don't have to install it yourself.)

And what you've described as the rankings process seems about right.
And it's far more than a spreadsheet model based on rankings/seeds/and stats provided by others.

No offense to WKN. Just thought it was important that we try to keep things in perspective.

[BruceyB]

  23 hours ago, RockLobster said:

EXCEPT for... I was, too.

Rankings don't seem all that difficult when someone else is doing them for you.
(Air conditioning is simple, too. As long as you don't have to install it yourself.)

And what you've described as the rankings process seems about right.
And it's far more than a spreadsheet model based on rankings/seeds/and stats provided by others.

No offense to WKN. Just thought it was important that we try to keep things in perspective.

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There isn't much that is technical about ranking. You take into effect results of what happens and adjust accordingly. If you were going to provide preseason rankings that had to stand-up to the results of the season, you might have a point.. but ranking a group of athletes based on the previous seasons results and than adjusting them based on what happens really isn't that difficult.

I start with this years NCAA tournament qualifiers and how they performed and make an initial 1-33.. guys who beat them/lose to outsiders get adjusted accordingly. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be so hard to do?