Offthemat

Spiking his headgear into the mat.

PSU has 3 guys from PA, Maryland has 2 guys from MD. They both have 1 wrestler from the other state.

You guys are really coming out of your shells for this one.

Anybody’d go to a psychiatrist ought to have their head examined. YB

College is hard.

Cradle?

They keep going with no one wrestling, they’ll end up with no one watching.

Assassin.

They might’ve brought the freestyle clock.

I’ve seen plenty of guys too small to be effective at 125 and not so many over 190. But I might be missing something.

He may have been yonger longer, but can he grow a better beard than Michael?

If you’re wrestling 149 or 184 - yes.

It appears to me that it effectively removes the 149 weight and adds a couple of heavies.

That happens as is. The brackets are often blown up in the early rounds. Carr went down early last year; how many fringe AAs did he send home empty handed?

Would it make that much difference at what point the losers enter consolations.

Yes. I would reward the conference champs of every conference. 3rd place? Not so much. It might be a draw for some of the lesser conferences recruiting. I agree that wrestling is a tough sport and I think coaches are doing what they can to prevent injuries. John Smith recently talked about the point where takedowns are called having an effect on injuries. So, just like other sports, injuries and lineups during conference competition has an affect on conference championships. Thereby increasing the importance of team performance while remaining an individual sport. If you’re skipping matches because they don’t matter, with this, that would change.

For NCAAs, definitely seed conference champs above any 3rd place finishers, maybe 2nd.

My proposed formula works like this: Seeding at conference tournaments are based on conference duals only. If wrestler A appears in 5 duals and wins all, and wrestler B wrestles 3 matches and wins 1, whichever wrestler enters the tournament is seeded based on a 6-2 record. If there are two wrestlers with identical records and no head to head match to go on, the wrestler from the team with the better conference record seeds ahead of the other. Putting emphasis on individual and team performance in duals for conference tournament seeding may help to reduce ducking. In the end, it’ll still boil down to coaches and wrestlers.

I like that.

If it has no effect on seeding at Nationals, would fewer wrestlers duck duals and consolation matches? Don’t most wrestlers want to wrestle?

At a discount?

So a possible #1 Big12 vs #3 Big12 final.

Good point. This is the main thought I had, but it doesn’t do much for the dual matches. A conference dual championship? Just can’t come up with a reasonable solution for emphasizing duals more. That would still be okay to give the easier path to the champions; might make recruiting better for smaller conferences.

Would it put more emphasis on dual matches and reduce conference tournament MFFs if only the finalists from each tournament were seeded and the others were drawn?

How bout Konner Doucet? He didn’t win this weekend but kept it close with two big guys.