Wrestleknownothing

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.

Did I mention that Pete Hegseth is a moron who is worse than any DEI hire that was ever hired?

This one is pretty egregious. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/ And 90 minutes after this became public Trump claimed to know nothing about it (his go to move). He is either lying about that (my guess) or he is stunningly uninformed for a President.

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:

from 1957 to 1962 when there were only 4 AA's per weight, Nichols got his first 20. from 1963 to 1978 when there were only 6 AA's per weight, Nichols got his next 96 (from 1966 to 1969 there were 11 weights) from 1979 to 1985 when there were 8 AA's per weight, Nichols got his last 40

Sanderson moves into a tie with Bobby Douglas. Brands is within 10 of them both. Harold Nichols has at least five more years at the top of the mountain. Finish = the average finish of their AA's.

Didn't you hear? Shadowy Vegas influences paid Steveson off to take a dive. They must have gotten to the coaches too. I think I saw someone in a fedora sneaking away with the challenge brick in a bag with a bid dollar sign on it.

After all the talk last week about being able to count to four, I think we all missed that they had their third and fourth All-Americans in program history. Stephen Little (now a two-timer) and Matty Bianchi, join Nasir Bailey (2024) on their Wall of Fame.

Recency bias is definitely at play. Everyone on the original list was from ~2009 and after. And no Dan Gable.

It is a long list. There are 148 two-time champs.

I almost forgot. I owe you this. A team of just #20 seeds would have scored 28 points. Good enough for a tie for fourth. Like investing, diversification is the answer. And if you were wise enough to invest in this diversified portfolio of seeds, you would be sitting pretty on easy street at this point. You would be no richer, of course, but you would be prettier.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, swimmers are like blind squirrels and stopped clocks.

Some updates: Timers Only one of the possible two-timers became an actual two-timer, Jesse Mendez. That is still one better than the possible three-timers, who got shut out. And while it is impressive, I remain unmoved on the historical significance of the lone five-timer. Career NCAA Points List Ridge Lovett, Kyle Parco, and Beau Bartlett failed to crack the Rex Peery line (59 career points), and so do not make the list. Stephen Buchanan finishes his career with 64 points, putting him tied at 120 (after excluding 5th years). Wyatt Hendrickson and Cohlton Schultz are on the list due to the fifth year (and higher than Buchanan), which I don't feel real good about. Due to the extra bites at the apple, Carter Starocci and Keegan O'Toole move up to #1 and #4, with Cael Sanderson and Logan Stieber sliding a spot to #2 and #3, respectively. Now, I really do not feel good about it. Parker Keckeisen moves up to #19. Team Points Moving on. Losses It is with a heavy heart that I report Kyle Parco succeeded in becoming the first to lose 12 times at the NCAA tournament. Like the point totals of the five-timers, I do not feel good about it. I feel especially bad that it happened through injury. For that reason there are two asterisks on this one.

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.

No transfer would surprise me.

Said the most bitch sounding guy on the board.

Don't need God's plan. Pyle has a plan.

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.

Agreed. If he gets one or two first period TDs, then the only reason for his opponent to commit to a ride is if they think they can get a turn or if they just don't want to get embarrassed on their feet any longer. That said, I could certainly see opponents going to the "Angelo Ferrari school of folkstyle wrestling when faced with a superior force" in an attempt to make it out of the first period at 0-0, so that the ride matters.

I can certainly see where Starocci and the PSU community disagreed with the decision, but I agree that it is good for wrestling to feature multiple story lines. Wrestling out of order so that the two big stories bookended the night was awkward, but in retrospect, a good call. That the night ended with the second biggest upset of all time, made the decision makers look pretty smart. About that last point, Jordan Burroughs needs to grow some thicker skin. Bragging about the decision on match order in the moment was the wrong emphasis. He should have been putting the upset into perspective and saved his victory lap for later.

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.

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.

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.

This data is definitely for sale. It is a big business selling alternative data sets to hedge funds. It used to be things like counting cars in parking lots to get a jump on earnings announcements, but now a lot of it is cell phone tracking data. I am not sure to what extent turning off location services on your phone affects the data or not. Just because your tracking is turned off does not mean somewhere it is know what cell towers your phone is hitting.

PSU scored 34.5 bonus points this year (10 MD, 5 TF, 7 PF). Last year they scored 34. As near as I can tell 34 was a record last year and 34.5 is a new record this year. Does anyone know of any higher?