maligned

I disagree a little bit. I think it's a little more predictable than last year. I'll be surprised if we don't see any of Ramos, Figs, or Lilledahl on the podium. Ramos has been way more active and aggressive than last year. I don't think he'll lose a match because of freezing up again. Figs looked insane at Big 12s other than the fluke loss his first match. He could certainly lose an upset, but it's hard to imagine him losing a couple other than amongst the very best. And Lilledahl seems to be at the highest level he's been all year. I expect one of these 3 to win it and all of them to be Top 8.

It's not about disregarding tournaments. It's that rankings and standings consider all matches/games equally, with tiebreaker biases toward head-to-heads first and foremost, then possibly toward recency or specified bigger events. When two guys or teams have one loss versus three losses and the head-to-head is also involved, the 3-loss guy will never be ranked higher because of the principle of weighting all results mostly on the same footing.

We knew the seeds would go the way that they did because there's a heavy emphasis on conference championships. But back to the ranking discussion here: Bartlett's wins against the seeded field (10-1, 3-1 Top 8, 7-1 Top 16): #1, #3, #3, #13, #14, #15, #15, #23, #27, #28 Loss: #6 Hardy's wins against the seeded field (12-3, 5-3 Top 8, 8-3 Top 16): #3, #4, #4, #6, #6, #12, #14, #15, #21, #28, #29, #31 Losses: #2, #5, #7 Again, if there's no conference championship and recency bias in play, there's no way a blind résumé analysis puts Hardy in front. He wrestled a slightly tougher schedule, but he lost 3 of 8 against the best AND lost the head-to-head. If this were a high school seeding meeting heading into the state series, people would wonder why we're even talking. Hardy deserves the #1 seed based on the conference championship biased protocol. But the question of why rankers have Bartlett ahead of Hardy doesn't have a complicated response.

Not if they played similar schedules. No.

So in the last 10 tournaments, 100 weight classes, all with 16+ seeds... Half of champs are #1's. One third of champs are 2's & 3's. 90% of champs are 1-4's. Frequency of placing by seed: 1 - 96% 2 - 89% 3 - 87% 4 - 78% 5 - 63% 6 - 57% 7 - 56% 8 - 50% 9 - 39% 10 - 39% 11 - 29% 12 - 19% 13 - 14% 14 - 13% 15 - 14% 16 - 7% All others: 2.8%

Agree with others that it's about particular wrestlers, rather than a 2nd favorite team. Cheer for all the Indiana ex-high schoolers, no matter where they are. And, as a recent Columbus transfer that has seen a lot of Ohio St matches live, I've become a fan of their guys and their stories (but still somehow don't cheer for the team?...strange, I know).

Insults question as too childish to take seriously--then thinks deeply about answer and summarizes all long-stored up thoughts on the subject.

But you're right about pre-2014 as well. The 2010-2018, 16-seed chart should only have 50 results for each of seeds 13 to 16.

I think maybe he's got 10 extra DNPs for every seed in the 2019 to 2024 chart (giving everyone a DNP in 2020)? @cowcards Thoughts?

Wait, confused...2019 to 2024 is 6 years, but there was no tournament in 2020. You have 60 weights worth of results for 6 years x 10 weights. What am I misunderstanding?

@cowcards I assume he's talking only about these situations like Hardy vs. Bartlett. Bartlett has a better season. Hardy gets the Big 10 title and probably ascends to the #1 seed despite a worse overall resume. (We're obviously not talking about whether an unranked guy from a weak weight class in a small conference outperforms the NCAA # 2 or 3 seed.) I think the Bartlett/Hardy and Lilledahl/Ramos type of scenario is the one that would be interesting to analyze. i.e. Do results become more predictive of tournament success later in the season? I'm sure they do for a variety of reasons, but it would be cool to see a study that could give us an objective picture of how much more predictive they are.

Beat me to it!

@cowcards I LOVE this table. I'd be curious to see it with only the 6 years of 33 seeds included. Or the 14 or 15 years since at least Top 16 were seeded.

True

He identified 3rd place as the most frequent landing spot for the 3 to 5 seeds. In fact, DNP is the single most likely landing spot if that's what we're considering. But, yes, collectively, placing is more frequent than not for those seeds.

I know the point you're making, but I'm not sure fighting for the seed matters that much. I think you have your causality backwards. 1s and 2s win more because they're the best wrestlers and make the number next to their name look correct, not the other way around. Usually the best wrestlers are identifiable and get the highest seeds. Then they usually win.

If they place. Most frequently DNP, though, overall.

In any other sport's rankings or standings, the team or the guy with the best overall results is higher. Only in wrestling do we put freak-out emphasis on the thing we saw 5 minutes ago, assuming that must be the "actual" truth, rather than only a piece of the puzzle. Bartlett/Hardy is a definite no-brainer: Head-to-head: Bartlett 1-0, Hardy 0-1 vs. Top 20: Bartlett 8-1, Hardy 8-3 Ramos/Lilledahl is trickier: Head-to-head: Lilledahl 1-0, Ramos 0-1 vs. Top 20: Ramos 9-1 (4 bonus wins, 1 bonus loss), Lilledahl 6-2 (3 bonus wins, 1 bonus loss) In true standings, head-to-heads and common opponent transitive W/L's are equal because you've earned just as much and they are just as predictive (only if all else is equal do you then weigh head-to-head more). Above, head-to-head and Vombaur round-robin cancel each other out in the Bartlett/Hardy discussion. Same for head-to-head and the McCrone round-robin in Ramos/Lilledahl. Take those results away, and we're left with an undefeated wrestler up against a wrestler with losses in both cases. We're not trying to figure out the linear heavyweight champ here. It's rankings based on all inputs.

Two reasons I can imagine for a true national ranking: 1) it communicates a true picture of how the coaches viewed everybody in the end, and 2) guys who qualified for the tournament that had subpar seasons get lumped together in not earning any points in the Coaches' rank category when determining seeding. Ranking list is not the same as the RPI list because you still have to have a minimum number of matches to qualify for RPI.

Where? Don't see it where they normally release it.

They handle the seeding protocol very robotically. The only element that could bring in previous season bias, if resumes are similar, is Coaches' rank. Everything else is strictly results-based.

Ha...read the first 15 topic headings and didn't notice they were all active within the last 12 hours. Didn't look back far enough. thanks

Are D1 allocations set to be released today? They were released the Thursday a week before conference tournaments last year.

Anybody know the actual reason Brooks didn't wrestle?

Sorry, I wasn't tracking this event very closely...why didn't Brooks end up wrestling?