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Just looking at some stats from the team scores that I found interesting. 2024 Penn State vs. 1997 Iowa For those wondering about the 3 pt. takedown and 4 point near fall and how that affected bonus points. Penn State gained 11 extra team points via bonus that they would not have received had it not been for a combination of the above scoring changes since 1997 although you could argue some of their tech falls might have still come as some came like 5 minutes into the match. They had 8 total tech falls so that accounts for 4 of those points (tech falls going to major decisions = -0.5 team points) Team Over-performers and under-performers - looking at how teams were projected to score based strictly on seeds (advancement and placement points) and how many placement and advancement points they actually scored (no bonus) Over-Performers 1. Ohio State (+16.5) 2. Michigan (+16) 3. Stanford (+15) 4. Little Rock (+10) 4. Lock Haven (+10) 6. Virginia Tech (+9) 7. Oklahoma (+8.5) 8. Penn State (+7) 9. Navy (6.5) 9. Arizona State (6.5) Over-Performers / Number of Qualifers 1. Lock Haven (3.33) 2. Stanford (3.00) 3. Little Rock (2.00) 4. Ohio State (1.83) 5. Michigan (1.78) 6. Oklahoma (1.70) 7. Navy (1.30) 8. VMI (1.00) 8. West Virginia (1.00) 10. Virginia Tech (0.90) Under-Performers 1. NC State (-46.5) 2. Lehigh (-27) 3. Purdue (-12) 4. Northern Iowa (-10) 5. Harvard (-8.5) 6. Binghamton (-8) 7. Illinois (-7.5) 8. Oklahoma State (-6.5) 9. Cal Poly (-5.5) 10. Air Force (-5) Under-Performers / Qualifiers 1. NC State (-4.65) 2. Lehigh (3.38) 3. Harvard (-2.83) 4. Illinois (-2.50) 5. Purdue (-2.40) 6. Binghamton (-2.00) 7. Air Force (-1.67) 8. Northern Iowa (-1.43) 9. Cal Poly (-1.00) 9. Brown (-1.00) 9. The Citadel (-1.00) Bonus Points - Which teams scored the most? Total Bonus Points 1. Penn State - 34 2. Cornell - 19.5 3. Iowa State - 17 4. Iowa - 15 5. NC State - 13.5 6. Northern Iowa - 12 6. Nebraska - 12 6. West Virginia - 12 9. Missouri - 10. 5 10. South Dakota State, Michigan, Ohio State - 9.5 Bonus Points per qualifier 1. Penn State - 3.40 2. North Dakota State - 2.50 3. West Virginia - 2.40 4. Cornell - 2.17 5. Air Force - 2.00 6. Iowa State - 1.89 7. Northern Iowa - 1.71 8. Iowa - 1.67 8. Ohio - 1.67 10. Wisconsin - 1.60 Conference Stats - I wanted to look at this as a whole since there was a lot of debate about how conference place changed seeding Overperformance or Under-performance - Actual points vs. projected points just looking at placement and advancement (no bonus) Total Performance 1. Pac 12 (+27) 2. Big Ten (+26) 3. MAC (+16.5) 4. SoCon (+2.5) 5. Big 12 (-4) 6. EIWA (-31.5) 7. ACC (-36.5) Total Performance / Number of qualifiers 1. Pac 12 (+0.90) 2. MAC (+0.66) 3. Big Ten (+0.27) 4. SoCon (+0.15) 5. Big 12 (-0.06) 6. EIWA (-0.52) 7. ACC (-1.01) Conference Bonus Points 1. Big Ten (106.5) 2. Big 12 (81.5) 3. EIWA (41) 4. ACC (34.5) 5. Pac 12 (23) 6. MAC (12.5) 7. SoCon (4) Conference Bonus Points per qualifier 1. Big 12 (1.25) 2. Big Ten (1.11) 3. ACC (0.96) 4. Pac 12 (0.77) 5. EIWA (0.67) 6. MAC (0.50) 7. SoCon (0.24)

At the risk of opening myself up to huge amounts of ridicule, I will proudly proclaim that Keystone Light is my favorite beer, and this thread made me want one. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm going with a big Hell No. Love him or hate him, he brings up topics to discuss. He comes across as knowledgeable and not biased overall. I simply don't understand the hate this guy gets. Some of us come to this board to get away from the struggles of work, family, or life in general. My work is hard, and very demanding, and I like having a break to put my mind elsewhere, and this board does that sometimes. And it's mostly his topics. I hope he continues posting.

Honestly Kennedy to SDSU is a prediction that makes a ton of sense. He’s been teammates with both Brady and Bennett Berge at Kasson Mantorville and unless Cael Swenson is moving up, 165 is a hole. SDSU has a great program that hasn’t lost anyone of note since Hahn took over

Seriously, down 2-3 with 30 seconds left in the match, Kelly sticking Penrith with a spladle in the 1987 championship match was the ultimate.

Jimmy creates dialogue. Most of you whiners respond to his topics. People create topics about Cinnabon because he living rent free in your head. Just block him. Thats how I quit seeing Hammerlock.

Alvarez In the portal again

From how John does things, Hamiti probably doesn't want to cut to 149

Hamiti still has his apendix, both kidneys, a full head of hair, and all of his toes. I think a good surgeon could get him down to 157

Gus, I think you've got something there and Okie State has some $$$$$ they can probably locate. He would fit in, but would have to learn how to interpret Oklahoma dialect. They talk funny down there, kinda like they talk in southern Missouri.

I don't want to hear any more of this talk about Ben going to Wisconsin. Smith is going to eventually retire at Miz and my ultimate dream is an Akren as head coach and KO on staff. Please...please...please!

Isn’t this what started the beef ?

Casey might be an under appreciated key to PSU’s success, but that might be because he is in the perfect role at PSU, which is more hands on in terms of developing talent. If he becomes a head coach, he is going to be doing more leadership type work and less actual wrestling work. It’s just the nature of being the leader of a program. I’m not saying he won’t be a great head coach and make a program very competitive, but I also don’t buy into the idea that his success at PSU is a 1 for 1 carryover to somewhere else. So many factors go into that, level of financial support, admin support etc.

I agree with what you're saying, but Shane Griffith was also held together by tape the entire season. We're lucky his limbs didn't fall off.

Wait, isn't that the NICE thing to do? Attack the wounded leg? Leaving him his good leg for support? I'd attack his good leg and make him hop around on the crippled one.

I don't understand hating wrestlers. The amount of time and work these guys have to put in to wrestle at that level is insane. I don't dislike a single NCAA wrestler.* Daton Fix seems like a good dude. It kind of got me when he said wrestlers are people too and talked about all the hate he gets which I think gets to him because he understandably doesn't get why people just hate him for no good reason. People can hate the style a wrestler has or something but these are actual people here and if the worst thing you know about them is that they wrestle a boring style and you hate them because of that I think you need to grow up. * You would have to do something outrageous for me to dislike you as a wrestler. Maybe you commit crimes or you flip off the whole crowd like a maniac or something. You know, the extreme examples.

Nothing wrong with being critical of the performance, but I wouldn't expect any major changes. The athletic department seems happy with the status quo, and Mizzou is not a destination school for wrestling (or any other sport). I don't see them spending the money necessary to change that. I just hope Smith can find a way to light a fire back under the program. Exactly Crotaius. There is no pressure to win wrestling at Mizzou, and to be honest, with us being in the SEC for everything else, I'm just happy every year wrestling is not dropped. MU is not going to spend money to improve the program. Smith has done the unimaginable by building the program to where it is and "tickling" the loyal wrestling fans of the state. I just want my cake and eat it too, thus the criticism and wishful posts. Just an old retired guy with too much time to bitch.

Cormier is the right choice for commentator at the NCAA championships. He’s comfortable on the mic. He’s a relatively big name. He understands people who do not follow wrestling. He’s funny. And for casual fans (as well as plenty of wrestling fans) he’s a good story teller and entertaining. The NCAA championships are a time to showcase the sport to a wider audience, and technical commentary is not the right choice. Cormier is.

Not unless he wants to die by a thousand ankle picks

He was talking about graduate programs. I’m sure a lot of these guys had no intention initially of going to graduate school at the same place they did undergrad if at all. But the free Covid year gave them the opportunity for an additional year of eligibility and to potentially get paid to wrestle while using it. People like to complain about the free Covid year, but encouraging guys to use it while getting a graduate degree is certainly one good thing about it.

100% He's a FS guy without any reliable attack in a folkstyle match. He wrestles sumo in FS. He pushes guys and then scores when they push back. Slide bys and snaps and par terre turns. He is so good at that stuff that it's assumed he has folkstyle offense he's choosing not to use. He doesn't. Last night is who he is. 7 years of college somehow didn't change his inability to shoot and score.

A lot of kids, athletes or not, go to different schools for their undergrad than they do for their grad degree. My brother did his undergrad at NDSU and is getting his graduate at Rutgers. It’s very common and sometimes even encouraged to get different experiences. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The hawks are going to be circling Bailey and Little from Little Rock. I hope they both stay and help Erisman build that program.

With the additions of Carter and Brooks to the 4X club let's see your new ranking of 4X champs. 1. Cael Sanderson - Undefeated 159-0. No question here. 2. Kyle Dake - Won as a true freshman and did it in four weight classes. He finished 137-4. 3. Pat Smith - First guy to do it. That means something to me. He finished 121-5-2 4. Carter Starocci - He had to win his fourth title on one leg and went through two previous champs. He was unbeatable after his freshman year. He finished his career 93-4. 5. - Aaron Brooks. He moved up to 197lbs for his fourth and was absolutely dominant with nobody even close. Finished his career 89-3. 6. Yianni Diakomihalis. This was tough between him and Brooks. He had one less loss but the deciding factor for me is that he was not as dominant as Brooks his final year when he should be at the his best. The loss he took to Gomez in his final year was the tiebreaker for me. 7. Logan Steiber. He was obviously great but the finals against Oliver weighed heavily here for me. He finished his career 119-3. After Cael and Dake I really think it's splitting hairs with the rest of the guys if I am being honest. You could move those guys around and I wouldn't have any real objection.

Hendrickson is entering the WCAP program - nothing but FS moving forward. https://myairforcelife.com/air-force-wcap/

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gZ030P7DrwfC_wPYLLIRU9L07yMgyCAzd8ses67L89E/edit#gid=498106119 Cael vs. Gable vs. the Field Semi-Finals Overall Winning Percentage Cael 61-12 83.25% Dan Gable 81-35 69.83% Higher Seed Winning Percentage Cael 47-2 95.92%(Only losses were Jon Reader and David Zabriskie in 2009 ) Dan Gable 67-13 83.75% Field 75.13% Lower Seed Winning Percentage Cael 14-10 58.33% Dan Gable 14-22 38.89% Field 24.87% Finals Overall Winning Percentage Cael 40-21 65.57% Dan Gable 45-36 55.56% Higher Seed Winning Percentage Cael 24-9 72.73% Dan Gable 33-13 71.74% Field 71.31% Lower Seed Winning Percentage Cael 16-12 57.14% Dan Gable 12-23 34.29% Field 28.69%

I'm not a John Smith fan by any means... two coaches I really dislike and he is one of them. I agree with the comments about him and the program.....But for Fix himself, the guy lost 6 matches in 4 years... Suriano in OT... RBY in OT....RBY by 1.... Vito my Major... McGee by 1.... Vito by 2 The only "bad loss" he took was maybe McGee. He lost to a world champ by major last year - a guy who steamrolled everyone. He came back past his prime and ended up in the match until the last minute. What did people expect to happen there? If he had beat Vito it would have been because Vito was hurt and then it doesn't count. Was Fix picked to win over Vito? No. I'm not convinced based on this season that he got worse, when the only loss he took was a world champ that he wrestled tougher against this year than last. Is this where the vito was hurt and Fix stalled comes in?

I’d bet on Josh Barr and Lucas Cochran at 184 and 197. Starocci will be back. Barr is too good to sit another year. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Part of me wonders if Caliendo doesn’t go 157 next year with Franek gone. If he’s able, which wouldn’t shock me, that would be best case scenario for them. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I agree that the stat on Dake winning 4 different weights is more of a neat trivia question rather than something that bolsters his argument. But the fact that he won as a TRUE freshman is huge. That and owning David Taylor who is one of our all time greats easily puts him right behind Cael.

People talk about this a lot and it seems like a very odd thing to give a wrestler credit for putting on weight. It’s not like he did it all after the age of 25 when he was done growing. FAR more impressive to me is that Dake did it entirely on his own. There was nobody in his room on his level, and his mind and mental approach were the entire catalyst and motivating factor for all of it. He doesn’t have any older brothers who beat the daylights out of him when he was young to get him good, it all just came from inside him and happened in his own mind. That is a very special thing to be able to do.

When I was picking my screen name last month I almost went with NickalsEgo

It is time to review how the 3 point takedown impacted bonus point scoring in this tournament. At the beginning of the year I predicted that there would be a 32.7% increase in bonus points. I got there by making assumptions about the likelihood of near majors becoming majors and near tech falls becoming tech falls. So how did I do? Benchmarks Matter To answer that question we need to know what we are comparing to. 32.7% of what? Bonus point scoring is somewhat volatile from year to year. If we just look at last year versus this year we get a very different answer than if we look at last 5, or 10, or 20 years versus last year. Ideally, if the jump was real and meaningful it would not matter which time window was chosen. For my estimate, I used 1988 as a starting point because that is the starting point for when I have match data, so let's stick with that. The average number of bonus points per match was 0.43 and the one standard deviation band around that was 0.37 to 0.49. So, how did we do this year? Turns out we were spot on that +1 SD number of 0.49 bonus points per match. OK, so high-ish, but not exactly knocking my sox off high. Not even record high. As a matter of fact, as recently as 2016 and 2017 we had higher numbers. So What gives? PINFALLS I assumed that there would be a measurable jump in majors (just barely) which have a bigger impact than a jump in tech falls, which I also assumed would increase (correct). But what I failed to account for is that with more matches ending early due to tech fall, there would be fewer pinfalls. In hindsight, this seems obvious. A lot of pinfalls occur after the superior wrestler has had a little time to tenderize his meat. But, with tech falls coming hotter and faster, there just isn't enough time to really work over that tough cut and flip it. Verdict The verdict is still a little unclear. It is hard to be definitive based on one tournament, but that is the point isn't it? The result from this one tournament is not definitive enough to say the change in scoring led to an increase in bonus points. Yes, there was a big increase in bonus points over last year, but last year was a historically low total, and probably an unfair point of comparison. Yes, there was a measurable jump in tech falls, adding a half a point over a major. But there was a near identical drop in pinfalls, losing a half point relative to a tech fall. Asterisk So, what does it mean for PSU's record team points total? I think very little to nothing. It all comes out in the wash. 172.5 > 171.5 (170)

I have probably never rooted for Fix in NCAA matches, but he is a warrior that deserves some love and appreciation from the wrestling world. He is dedicated and highly skilled and successful, even if he did not quite get the brass NCAA ring. I tip my hat to his outstanding career and many records set.

Hamiti lost to Carr and Olejnik to not place. It’s shocking on the surface, but in reality 165 had about 12 guys that seemed like sure-fire AA’s. No shame in losing to Carr or Olejnik at all. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

1. Sanderson 2. Brooks 3. Starocci (would have been #2 without the knee injury) 4. Dake 5. Smith 6. Yianni 7. Stieber Brooks and Starocci over Dake because Dake had a much lower career bonus percentage

Tom Brands

You're making up some stories here. You claim nobody wants to wrestle for him and he has a bad reputation, but their recruiting the last few (and next few) years has been strong. Their real problem has been culture. They let Ferarri get away with a lot and it wrecked their program. Coleman Scott had a very positive impact this year and they started 4 freshmen and only lose Fix. They were improved this year even without a great NCAAs. Next year they should be improved again. They are just fine.

Yeah, NIL has really smoothed out the playing field in the near term. I don't know enough about the coaching dynamics within the room, Cunningham is undoubtedly an invaluable part of the proverbial penn state pizza. And no, we won't miss dominance, but the overall level of wrestling goes in waves. Each team of amazing performers have their own feel, their own style and flavor of wrestling. There have never been teams that had that J-Rob Minnesota vibe. That was something you had to see during those years when it was around. If you missed it, it's gone, video doesn't do it justice. Same thing with the Rosholt Hendricks Era '05 oklahoma state teams, they were unapologetically in your face, and they always showed up when it counted. Nothing like them since. And now, with these teams. Penn State has a vibe that won't be replicated. There will be other amazing technicians and coaches who come through, but this experience is unique to that environment and what that room puts forth. To change lanes considerably to approach the concept from a different angle, no matter where you are or what you're doing, it's always a good idea to spend a few minutes appreciating a sunset.

Freestyle used to be horrible to watch. People playing the edge, ball grabs, lack of action, alleged corruption, etc. But then the IOC voted to cut wrestling from the Olympics, which put UWW in survival mode. One of the results was a slate of rule changes that made freestyle fun to watch. IMO it's now better than folkstyle. Among the best of those rule changes -- again IMO -- is the step out rule.

He went out, bought the bottle, got all of the way home, put it on ice, set out his glass, got the lighting just right, sat down, popped the cork, filled his glass, lifted it to his lips, and Larry Owings swiped it from him and drank the whole thing.

Not a big Fix fan...but this is a good post match interview.

Gable is way more critical than you think. Taylor makes perfect sense. He has the reputation to recruit against Cael, and he's probably the only one, unless he wants to chase GOAT status and wrestles a whole cycle, he has enough hype to inspire donors...and Taylor is ambitious guy, whats he supposed to chase if not Cael?

He is an outstanding wrestler. OUTSTANDING. That said, simply don’t want to watch him against other great wrestlers. Boring.

I agree on Carter. He was great after the semis and particularly thoughtful IMO after the finals. Him giving props to the trainer was really classy and cool to see.

Yes.

Question for the masses: should Hamiti look to transfer?

I think it's an important differentiation, Wolak is transferring as a GRAD transfer.

Wasn’t Olejnik a grad transfer? I look at those guys in a different light. It’s possible that NIU doesn’t even have a grad program in his degree. There’s a lot of factors that could come in to play there. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk