Big Board Freshmen

[Wrestleknownothing]

In response to my returning points thread, someone on 34andcounting asked what kind of points could a freshman be expected to score at the NCAA Tournament.

Using Willie's Big Board data I decided to take a look. One huge caveat is that the numbers below are fitted lines through some VERY noisy data.

 

The first thing I looked at was the odds of qualifying for the tournament based on BB rank. There are 12 years worth of graduating classes in the data (2013 - 2023) that have completed true freshman and redshirt freshman years. For these calcs I am including true freshmen and redshirt freshmen for each high school graduating year. For example, for 2022 grads I include 2023 true freshmen plus 2024 redshirt freshmen.

80% of Success is Showing Up

• 100% of #1 Big Boarders qualified for the tournament as either a true freshman or a redshirt freshman. These are your only sure things.
• By the time you get to the #10 BB it is a 50/50 proposition whether they even qualify for the tournament, never mind score once they get there.

No Participation Points

But you can't just show up. Once a freshman makes the tournament they still need to score. Combining scoring with probability of making the tournament steepens the curve somewhat.

• At almost 18 points per, #1 BB can be expected to score in the high teens in their freshmen year (true or redshirt).
• But that is it. No other rank cracks double digits.
• And by the time you get to the #10 ranked freshman recruit you are looking at about 4 points.

Bring in da' Noise, Bring in da' Funk

That really should be Mitchell Mesenbrink's walk out music. Remember what I said about the noise in the data? Mesenbrink is the physical embodiment of that noise (and he was trained by the Master of Funk). As the #59 ranked wrestler in his class, the line above suggests he is good for about a half a point in his freshman year. Well, at 19.5 points he is what we would call an outlier. And the reason you should take this with a grain of salt.

[Truzzcat]

This is awesome.

[Husker_Du]

WKN always delivers.

and i will never escape that ranking for Mesenbrink

[scourge165]

32 minutes ago, Husker_Du said:

WKN always delivers.

and i will never escape that ranking for Mesenbrink

I don't know when you do the last one, but... he really didn't seem like a prodigy until I guess the summer after his Sr year. 

He hung on and won a VERY close match with a Soph in the State Finals as a Sr IIRC(Charlie Millard). 

~60 is about where I'd have expected. 

I wonder where you had Askren(if you did it then). I wouldn't have imagined he'd have been a top 20-30 recruit. 

[wrestlingfan22]

On 6/18/2025 at 2:51 PM, Wrestleknownothing said:

In response to my returning points thread, someone on 34andcounting asked what kind of points could a freshman be expected to score at the NCAA Tournament.

Using Willie's Big Board data I decided to take a look. One huge caveat is that the numbers below are fitted lines through some VERY noisy data.

 

The first thing I looked at was the odds of qualifying for the tournament based on BB rank. There are 12 years worth of graduating classes in the data (2013 - 2023) that have completed true freshman and redshirt freshman years. For these calcs I am including true freshmen and redshirt freshmen for each high school graduating year. For example, for 2022 grads I include 2023 true freshmen plus 2024 redshirt freshmen.

80% of Success is Showing Up

• 100% of #1 Big Boarders qualified for the tournament as either a true freshman or a redshirt freshman. These are your only sure things.
• By the time you get to the #10 BB it is a 50/50 proposition whether they even qualify for the tournament, never mind score once they get there.

No Participation Points

But you can't just show up. Once a freshman makes the tournament they still need to score. Combining scoring with probability of making the tournament steepens the curve somewhat.

• At almost 18 points per, #1 BB can be expected to score in the high teens in their freshmen year (true or redshirt).
• But that is it. No other rank cracks double digits.
• And by the time you get to the #10 ranked freshman recruit you are looking at about 4 points.

Bring in da' Noise, Bring in da' Funk

That really should be Mitchell Mesenbrink's walk out music. Remember what I said about the noise in the data? Mesenbrink is the physical embodiment of that noise (and he was trained by the Master of Funk). As the #59 ranked wrestler in his class, the line above suggests he is good for about a half a point in his freshman year. Well, at 19.5 points he is what we would call an outlier. And the reason you should take this with a grain of salt.

I am curious what the difference between true freshman and redshirt/greyshirt freshman was. I would guess that the curve is even steeper for true freshman in terms of contributing at NCAAs

[MizzouFan01]

On 6/19/2025 at 12:49 AM, scourge165 said:

I don't know when you do the last one, but... he really didn't seem like a prodigy until I guess the summer after his Sr year. 

He hung on and won a VERY close match with a Soph in the State Finals as a Sr IIRC(Charlie Millard). 

~60 is about where I'd have expected. 

I wonder where you had Askren(if you did it then). I wouldn't have imagined he'd have been a top 20-30 recruit. 

2 state titles and 3 Fargo AAs, I doubt Askren would’ve broke the top 75-100. Without knowing what we do now, I don’t think he would’ve even made the board. 

[scourge165]

1 hour ago, MizzouFan01 said:

2 state titles and 3 Fargo AAs, I doubt Askren would’ve broke the top 75-100. Without knowing what we do now, I don’t think he would’ve even made the board. 

Yeah, I guess, it was really hard to gauge Askren back then. I remember he lost to the kid from Minnesota(just...blanking on the name now, but he was a 4X undefeated National Champ at Augsburg, he went there because he wanted to play Football also). That kid was probably a top 3-5 overall recruit AND older, but it just wasn't competitive. 

But Askren just kept getting better. A guy like Hendricks(Johnny) beat him badly(Again, going off memory) as a Jr going into his Sr year and then by the end of their Sr year, it was a 6-5 match. That may be after the last ranking or too late to really impact it, and it kinda follows the Mesenbrink trajectory. 

 

[Wrestleknownothing]

2 hours ago, wrestlingfan22 said:

I am curious what the difference between true freshman and redshirt/greyshirt freshman was. I would guess that the curve is even steeper for true freshman in terms of contributing at NCAAs

60% of the points were scored by redshirts and 40% by true. But that is heavily skewed by the #1 ranked guys. They tend to wrestle as true freshman and they score bunches.

It is the only ranks where the majority wrestled as true freshman and they outscored their compatriots who sat a year by 145.5 to 64.

Excluding #1, redshirts had 65% of the points.

[MizzouFan01]

7 hours ago, scourge165 said:

Yeah, I guess, it was really hard to gauge Askren back then. I remember he lost to the kid from Minnesota(just...blanking on the name now, but he was a 4X undefeated National Champ at Augsburg, he went there because he wanted to play Football also). That kid was probably a top 3-5 overall recruit AND older, but it just wasn't competitive. 

But Askren just kept getting better. A guy like Hendricks(Johnny) beat him badly(Again, going off memory) as a Jr going into his Sr year and then by the end of their Sr year, it was a 6-5 match. That may be after the last ranking or too late to really impact it, and it kinda follows the Mesenbrink trajectory. 

 

Marcus Levessuer

[scourge165]

7 minutes ago, MizzouFan01 said:

Marcus Levessuer

Yeah, I remembered it shortly after posting this. 

He was a stud. He was undefeated at Minesota... albeit in limited matches, but...~14-0 in opens and not struggling as a RS Freshmen.