fishbane

Carter Starocci lost his first official NCAA match...

Unlikely. And also unlikely to be exactly what Starocci had in mind. Many of those guys would later win NCAAs, but in 2008 I think only three had titles. Schlatter won in 2006, Gillespie in 2007 (but he moved up), and Metcalf in 2008. It wasn't until 2009 that Burroughs and Caldwell would win NCAAs with JP O'Connor winning in 2010 and Jenkins the following year (2011). I suspect Starocci is talking about beating guys who have already won NCAAs.

I wonder how much the extra COVID year had to do with the current drought? The outlier year of 2022 with the most guys on a title streak was the year after everyone got a free year. That probably shouldn't be too surprising. The high school class of 2021 and after have had to wrestler, on average older, wrestlers than every past year. Someone that graduated high school in 2021 and wrestled as a true freshman like Dean Hamiti would have a difficult time getting to the top immediately.

He was 8th as a sophomore in 1981.

Matt McDonough won as a redshirt freshman in 2010. So he should be included with Dake for 2011

I don't get it either. Flo could just write the article about how Blaze has scheduled the press conference for 11/12 where Flowrestling sources expect Blaze to announce his commitment to the PSU Nittany Lions. Probably happens across many sports for many announcements. New outlet states the press conference date/time and in the same article also discusses what some unnamed insider source has told them to expect. I think that is what happened and the real mistake was Blaze telling a news outlet something they didn't want known publicly. Flowrestling didn't need to know his decision ahead of the public. How does it even help Flo if all they are going to do with the information is try and not leak it before the announcement?

They didn't say more damaging, but Pyles first describes the reach of their original article as small (it was up 10 only minutes/100-200 page views) before going into his white knight rant where he credited the twitter white knights with amplifying it to 100,000 people. By my math that is 50-100x the number of people Flo directly informed. Their mistake was small before the twitter white knights 100xed it was the message I got. The bold parts are where I think he was shifting blame. I am sure Pyles is not annoyed when Flo puts out news intentionally and wrestling fans amplify it to 100,000 people on social media. He can't really be upset at wrestling fans when they amplify big recruiting news Flo put out unintentionally. He might as well be upset at the internet and social media for existing. He's in the news business and people talking about the news they produce is kind of the point. When they mess up criticism will be part of that discussion.

If he gets it out in 2024 I'll be sure and send him my apology without mentioning any of my haters.

In today's NCAA landscape the OSU infractions would likely not result in a post season ban or perhaps more accurately be totally unnecessary to begin with. Diakomihalis could also fall into the coulda category too. He won his first two years out of high school then sat out in 2020 for an Olympic redshirt and again in 2021 as the Ivies didn't participate. Perhaps he wouldn't have wrestled even without the Ivy League's decision to focus on his Olympic goals. Lewis reversing course and competing in 2021 after taking an Olympic redshirt in 2020 didn't work out for him. He got injured and missed the trials all together. Even what Smith actually accomplished 4 win 5 years immediately out of high school distinguishes him from some other 4xers. Brooks and Diakomihalis only won 4 out of their first 6 years after high school and winning his first three years out of high school is second best behind Dake.

Minnow was also entirely correct in the tweet he made. "Someone is getting in trouble!" Someone did get in trouble. Spey admitted that in the discussion on FRL. He said "We took the responsible party out back in the alley earlier and beat the crap out of him as punishment." Were they talking about Minnow in the white knight discussion? It doesn't really make sense to call Minnow's tweet that was copied here that of a "white knight." Minnow is closer to schadenfreude than standing up for Blaze or outrage on his behalf. If Pyles is actually talking about people who expressed outrage on behalf of Blaze on twitter ahead of the announcement, he is addressing fewer than 10 individuals of limited social media reach. Why even bother to address them? If he's talking about Minnow then I think he is incorrect. From Minnow's vantage point I understand the amusement. Before calling out the "white knights" Pyles said they had Blaze's decision earlier from indirect sources (Not the Blaze family, not Perrysburg, not PSU), but didn't talk about it publicly like "other podcasts." I get the impression Flo considers themselves to be above that and better than Minnow and "other podcasts" (to a certain extent they are correct), but to hold that opinion and then accidentally leak the biggest recruiting announcement of the year... I would be laughing too.

Yeah, but the ironic part isn't Minnow amplifying their error - that was totally expected. The unexpected bit is that Flo was the source of the leak that preempted the announcement this time. Calling Minnow out as the one that ruined the announcement isn't any kind of gotcha on Minnow it's literally something he does on the regular. The thing that ruined it more than a normal Minnow tweet/post was that was that he was able to quote Flo as a source instead of an unnamed source which may have just been a rumor or straight up guess. For Minnow to make a gaff of similar gravity to Flo's misstep he'd have to accidentally include the name of an insider source in a tweet for something like that. It sounds like they are blame shifting. Like they are implying the people talking about it are more to blame than Flo for preempting the announcement. Only 200 people got it directly from Flo and if they didn't tell anyone it would have been fine, but 100,000 people found out early because of the white knight haters. Of course people are going to talk about it - it's big news and they got it early from Flo a reputable source. I am sure more people were talking about it from its newsworthiness than simply a hating on Flo angle and when there was hate it was often a mixed with a response to the news itself. I think the thing to do is to apologize and it's fine to say the steps taken to address it - edit the article promptly, reach out to the family, etc. but end it there. Could you imagine a legitimate news outlet doing this? Like an anchor at NBC, CNN, Fox News, ESPN, ect trying to argue people criticizing their mistake was somehow more damaging than the mistake itself. It makes no sense and it wouldn't go good.

Exactly. Just apologize. To many the call out will sounds like they are attempting to shift blame. Like they were really saying "We're sorry, but fewer than 200 people say our mistake directly. It was all you haters calling us out that really ruined the announcement." This will only fuel more criticism by their haters.

That's a good point as I would have included O'Toole in 2023 and missed that. I think if Lewis had won 4 out of 5 NCAA tournaments I'd view that feat a little differently too, but still a 4xer. It would be a similar to the difference in how I view Greg Jones and Earl McCready as 3x champs. Your explanation got me thinking about how infrequently 4xers and near 4xers wrestle 4 seasons in a row right out of high school or 4 straight years at all. Dake is the only person to win 4 straight years right out of high school. Sanderson, Stieber, Brooks and Staroocci all won 4 consecutive years, but not the 4 immediately following high school graduation. This got me thinking about that standout 2022 year again. Should Lee and Diakomihalis be counted this year? Diakomihalis didn't wrestle at all that season as the Ivies sat out winter sports due to COVID. He won his 4th the following year in 2023. Lee wrestled something like two matches and then shut it down taking an injury redshirt. He lost at NCAAs in 2023. Only 4 of those 7 guys actually wrestled at NCAAs in 2022 and only 5 of the 7 used a year of eligibility in 2022 (Ferrari used a competition year). If O'Toole and Lewis are viewed differently by you perhaps Ferrari should too. He used a year of eligibility in 2022 and if successful will be the first to win 4 that failed to win NCAAs in a season where a year of eligibility was burned. He was injured too late to take an injury redshirt in 2022. This is very similar to Lewis in 2021 the only difference was Lewis's injury allowed him to compete albeit at a reduced capacity and Ferrari was not cleared to compete.

Flo announcing it early is news. It would have received its own thread here and tweets with screen captures regardless of people dunking on Flo. If Mineo had worded his tweet in a more neutral way like "Flowrestling announces Marcus Blaze's commitment to PSU in a since edited article." It would have had the same effect as "Someone is getting in trouble" with a laughing emoji. I don't even think Mineo taking pleasure in Flo's screw up fits the definition of white knighting. Nor do I consider this post to be that. So who exactly is Pyles calling out and what reach do they have? A few replies in thread like this or retweet/comments on Mineo's tweet. That's likely in the noise and not worth doing since Pyles and Spey explaining it took longer than the actual apology. This reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where George was expecting an apology and didn't exactly get what he wanted. "All right, George, all right, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I'm so sorry that I didn't want your rather bulbous head struggling to find its way through the normal-sized neckhole of my finely knit sweater." George should have been happy with that! Lol.

At least they don't have any backups wrestling in it this year.