@Jon_Kozak
This one has me confused.
Ryder Block entered the 141 rankings at #26 on Dec. 9 after going 2-2 with a win over never ranked David Mayora and a win over never previously ranked Nash Singleton (Singleton entered the same week at #27). Block has wrestled twice since against higher ranked wrestlers and lost them both.
Singleton has lost to many unranked wrestlers since (and beat #33) causing him to drop from Flo's rankings.
But somehow Block has gone 0-2 and jumped 8 spots to #18. It feels like the Singleton win gave him a floor of #26, even though Singleton was not ranked at the time and would quickly lose his rank.
Block has only ever wrestled 6 times in his career, has lost four of those, but keeps moving up the rankings?
Iowa favored at three weights so far.
Ayala is preferred by 84% of voters.
Teemer is the favorite of the thinnest majority at 58%
Buchanan has a healthy edge at 77%
On the Penn State side there are four unanimous choices so far.
Maybe the most surprising is Bartlett with his keep it close to the end style?
Mesenbrink and Haines are the least surprising prohibitive favorites.
Only mildly surprising is Kerkvliet coming off a rip roaring, action packed 2-0 victory. Where for art thou, Iowa faithful?
Never mind, I see you, Iowa faithful. One half of the greatest sandwich ever invented is a lone wolf at 184 choosing Arnold to come away with the head.
Do we have a title race?
Wrestlestat finally got with the program and put Jacori Teemer back in their rankings. The result is the gap to PSU has shrunk considerably. From 63.7 points on December 23 (140 vs 76.3), the gap is down to 27.2 expected points.
This week will provide some clarity.
Caveat: PSU has a bad habit of performing to seed in spite of their high average seed. My expected points calcs assume the highest seeded wrestlers will perform slightly below seed. So there is that.
To be eligible for an at-large spot a wrestler has to participate in at least two matches at their conference tournament (this was new last year). Stepping on the mat and taking the injury default counts as participating. It also means that both count as losses. This is intentional so that a wrestler cannot MFF their way to a pre-allocated spot while only taking a single lose.
I think he stole that from Bill Barnwell.
"In part, that’s because I’m a spreadsheet fetishist who would write longform pieces and love letters in Excel if I could."
https://medium.com/@billbarnwell/the-easiest-way-to-lose-125-pounds-is-to-gain-175-pounds-b4fca27ffcc5