I guess Manning’s point is that he thinks Starocci should have just been seeded last at B10’s if they knew he wasn’t going to wrestle? It’s still probably a bit of a stretch to get Wilson to an automatic qualifying spot though.
If you reconstruct the bracket with everyone moving up 1 spot, he wrestles Maylor as an 11/6 matchup. If I’m reading this right, if he loses, with no Starocci he would’ve had a bye in his first consi match before wrestling the 4/5 loser, which would have been Welsh/Turley, both the guys he lost to, so he’d be back into the 9th place bracket there.
If he beats Maylor he probably places top 8 in that scenario, but he did lose to Maylor in the dual.
I mean I guess I wouldn’t be opposed to guys being able to not enter the conference tourney and still be entered into the at large pool (although there should be some penalty), but based on the current rules there isn’t anything wrong with what PSU did.