Eagle26

I don’t think they (UWW) care what America does with its folkstyle. I do think we would be better served and have a better product if we could work some freestyle concepts into folk. Step outs would be a huge improvement. I also would like to see some way stop the boring endless riding (ex. The ref brings them up after a certain amount of time). I do like the control aspect of folkstyle but overall the rules are better in freestyle. We could definitely make folk a little more like free while still maintaining the core concepts of folkstyle

And when they added multiple turns and when they added step outs. Techs are a lot easier to come by in Freestyle. I love almost everything about the current freestyle rules, but I would personally like to see us go back to one turn and then you have to change holds. We got to see a lot more great wrestling IMO

I would have to think the pickings are slim in the USA. I mean what percentage of the population has even a basic understanding of freestyle wrestling? It’s probably less than 10% of the wrestling population which is a small percentage to begin with.

I saw a lot of people on social media act like they are surprised by this too. Stanich is a beast. He placed 5th in the country as a true freshman in 2024. Beat several AAs as a redshirt this year. Has two years in a D1 room. The fact that Bassett is even close to that level is impressive. Definitely not an upset

That’s got to be some kind of record lol

I mean it’s literally called the US Open… that’s kinda the point that anyone can enter. So you are going to have big brackets. I think most competitors like the challenge and welcome the opportunity to get a bunch of matches!

Excellent summary. The years tend to run together after a while and it’s hard to remember what happened when lol.

Glad to hear it seems he might compete at the WTT. I don’t totally agree that skipping the open was the best strategy though. He would very likely win the 79 kg bracket and get a bye to final x. That has served him well in the past. Especially if Nolf decides to join WTT, that would make his path a lot tougher. I guess it’s really not much difference now that WTT are different dates than Final X. And he had no way of knowing what Dake, Nolf, and others are doing, so I understand the decision.

Davis to West Virginia??

I don’t think he ever made an announcement, but his absence from the open would suggest he may be done competing. I don’t think he ever sees 74 again, but I thought maybe he might try 79kg one more time to try to end on a high note. He certainly deserves a grand retirement. With Dake moving up, and 79 seemingly wide open, do you think he makes an appearance at WTT?

Whether it’s right or not, I personally would prefer it. I do think 12 weights is a bit of an overkill and it would probably be more likely to do 9 men’s and 9 women’s weights if we are stuck on 18. It would probably be more fair to do 10 men’s and 8 women’s but I’m guessing they would rather keep it equal. Honestly I’m surprised, Greco has made it this long without an equivalent women’s sport.

From Wikipedia…. “Executive director of the Russian Wrestling Federation, Makhmud Magomedov, stated that Saitiev died of cardiac arrest, and Russia's minister of sport Mikhail Degtyarev said Saitiev had been ill, frequently visiting medical centres. Saitiev's widow, Indira, stated Saitiev had fallen out of a second-storey window before his death. Russian outlet Baza [ru] reported that a janitor found Saitiev lying injured on the ground near a residence on Minskaya Street, and called for an ambulance. Baza said Saitiev later died in hospital.” Crazy that there are such varying reports of his death, but no answers yet. You would think he’s a huge celebrity in Russia and it would be big news. But then again… I guess the media there knows when they have to keep quiet

I don’t think college wrestling really needs a weight class between 297 and 285. It will definitely just make the upper weights even weaker. If they do want to add a weight, that’s not necessarily a bad thing though. They just need to disperse it better among the lighter guys then. The weight before hwt should be no more than 210 IMO. Maybe something like this? 126 133 140 147 154 162 170 180 192 207 300

True that it’s very impressive they gave up a year of eligibility to stay with Brands. Honestly, I may have been misremembering some of the details. I remember a lot of controversy around that recruiting class. I was thinking it was mostly because they basically combined with Iowa’s recruiting class to get a double recruiting class. But maybe it was more just that they transferred and VT wasn’t happy.

To be fair I’m not anti Iowa, but I’ll crack a joke at any of the big programs. I agree that’s actually very impressive he got some real blue chippers to give up a year of eligibility to wrestle for him. I believe Brands is a great coach and a great recruiter… he’s got a few flaws but so does every coach - even Cael But you have to agree it is a bit ironic that Brands best recruiting class of all time committed to attending VT not Iowa.

I guess Brands was better at recruiting kids to VT than to Iowa then

Wasn’t that class with Metcalf the infamous “double recruiting class” though? Half of them went to VT originally and then joined in with the Iowa class. So that group needs an asterisk . Does anyone remember how many were recruited by Tom to VT? I know Metcalf was.

Maybe he just couldn’t see it?

It appears that the 16/17 seed combined perform about as expected (correct me if I’m wrong on that @Wrestleknownothing). The weird part is just that they are basically flip flopped with the 17 getting more AAs but the 16 winning more head to head. The biggest takeaway to me is that the seeding committee seems to do a very impressive job!

Not much talk about Lee Roper coming to OSU. I think this is good hire for them. He’s not really a big name, but they have the “star power” covered, so a coach with more experience and reputation as a good coach is just what they need. With this hire, what makes everyone so sure they are also replacing Gilman’s spot with someone else? Who is Roper replacing and where are they going?

Like you said… it’s all about potential. Even the guys who are returning National champs from this year are not guaranteed to score that again next year (see Figueroa). I think it’s likely Rocky and Figs will both be high AAs next year, but you never know. Past success has generally been a pretty good indicator of future success (although this year not as much). I totally understand you have to set parameters and it’s definitely interesting to see the lack of retuning points in the portal. Maybe a fun analysis sometime would be to see how retuning AAs did at the NCAA tournament? I’ve wondered if that’s a better indicator of success than say having a top 8 seed. This year I doubt it was, but in recent years I remember some returning AAs being seeded in the teens/twenties and pulling it off again

Always appreciate the data from WKN! But I have to agree this year is a bit of an outlier with “returning points” being much lower than it should be. Welsh was a runner up as a true freshman and Elam is a four time AA and both did not even compete last year, so they add zero points. I think we all agree (except for maybe one guy) that Figs is likely to score a lot more points than he did this year too. So just those three really skew the data. Plus a lot of other guys that we know have potential but just didn’t have an opportunity yet.

Brooks is 97? I would have assumed he’s at 92

You were supposed to give others a chance first lol. Honestly, I was pretty sure that was the right answer, but I didn’t have the data to back it up. So I’m glad you chimed in to confirm it!

I saw that… definitely a result that could go either way. I wouldn’t call it a fluke though.