boconnell

I thought the blood round was Friday night?

As an Oklahoma State fan I'm used to being on the other side of irrational bottom choices.

He was competitive in neutral in a 0-0 1st period. Then he got reversed in like 2 seconds and ridden for 1:58 without ever getting off his belly that entire time. He responded to that by choosing bottom and getting ridden for another 2 minutes without coming close to a point. Bottom was perhaps a bad choice there.

He has a surprisingly good gas tank for a guy who quit the sport, got fat, and came back at a higher weight than he's ever wrestled.

I was worried Carter Young might be affected by the injury, but he just turned his own good shot into the other guys takedown, so it looks like he is healthy.

Seriously. He scores a TD with 90 seconds left and then wastes a minute with a bad job letting the guy up that turns into a reversal for Byrd. Could have just gone neutral and had an actual chance at points.

Math checks out.

That doesn't stop the pin. Only the Air Force coach throwing a brick while his guy was pinning created the review. Glad the refs let common sense rule.

What about when a lower seed from Air Force sticks a higher seeded Michigan guy? How do strength of schedule and conference play in there?

Yep. He didn't even consider trying to initiate an attack in OT.

Wrestlestat has him at 1-5 against guys ranked in the top 45, so not sure there was any way to seed him higher.

Good job addressing a non-problem.

You are correct that in basketball they give you an unopposed opportunity to score. I am not sure that is the same as choice in wrestling, but it's close. In football they give yardage. That's not anything like choice in wrestling.

Plus Carr had both hands on O'Toole's near hand and kept him from covering the near leg while he was reaching for the far one. I thought that was obviously not a TD. But I agree Carr's 3rd period TD was a bit questionable. It certainly 'looked' and 'felt' like a TD, but not sure how it's supposed to be officiated. O'Toole was holding a leg but was laying on his hip while being folded in half with both legs trapped. Do we have a ref that can weigh in on that one.

I agree. I was rooting for Carr and both were stalling. Both also seemed unnecessary.

On both takedowns he was so patient. Never slow enough to get stalemated, but never fast enough to give O'Toole much to scramble with.

Refs at 157 and 165 were super talkative. I don't like it. Just call things correctly. I did think both refs got the calls right.

Good match. Seems like Carr can get to O'Toole's legs mostly when he wants to. Can't see a rematch going the other way.

Period 1 was Carr staying on the edge and O'Toole lightly chasing. O'Toole eventually got a deep shot but couldn't finish.

The challenge brick is mostly terrible. The refs rarely admit a mistake, the coaches throw it indiscriminately in the finals, and it kills the flow of the match.

That was an absurd call on review. I guess he just didn't want to admit he was wrong, because it was clear.

I believe it's been good for him. 197 is his obvious future, regardless of how strong the weight class is or isn't. He was only up last year because of Ferrari. He's wrestling where he wants to be and where he should be. This was not a team motivated move. They had Haas for 197 if Surber wanted to wrestle up. He obviously didn't.

I agree a leg cradle is being a douche. I think any decent coach should deal with a wrestler doing stuff like that. I don' think a ref should have anything to do with that situation.

It also seems you just answered the original question.

This is a disingenuous answer. You pretending that being a jerk is equal to unsportsmanlike conduct is playing make believe. Tons of stuff is being a jerk but doesn't come close to the level of unsportsmanlike conduct. The actual rule says unsportsmanlike conduct, includes, but is not limited to, such acts as failure to comply with the direction of the referee, pushing, shoving, swearing, taunting, intimidation, baiting an opponent, throwing ear guards or any other equipment, spitting, the clearing of the nasal passage in other than the proper receptacle, repeatedly dropping to one knee to break locked hands, indicating displeasure with a call, failure to keep shoulder straps up while on the mat and failure to comply with the end-of-match procedure. The closest application for a leg cradle (or for being a jerk in general) would be taunting or intimidation. But any ref that is trying to parse evil intent from appropriate actions is guilty of massive overreach. If the wrestler isn't actually doing something wrong, it is not the job of the ref to try to figure out if the right actions somehow have wrong intent.