500 wrestler

Seems to me far too many people lost the thread of this thread. The original post was dead on. I cringed when I heard Brooks say that, it was very uncool. Just finished watching the late this morning today so well behind the curve here. I'm not a religious person, but as far as I'm concerned the winner can thank whoever/whatever they want, and make a shout out to their faith. Obviously many of these athletes believe that their faith is a huge part of their success. Who am I to question that. I suspect faith helps you put things in perspective and helps you deal better with all the highs and lows. But that is not what this post is about. It's about Brooks disparaging the Muslim faith, plain and simple. One more thing: For most religions (there may be exceptions), if you are very religious then I think it's safe to say that you think your religion is the one truth and followers of all other faiths are just plain wrong. Otherwise, it's just a matter of choice, right? And if it's a matter of choice, it can't be the only truth. So I would speculate that most very religious people in their hearts agree with what Brooks said. But it's an unwritten rule that in a society such as ours that purportedly welcomes all religions, you just don't say things like that. Brooks is a young man, but old enough to know better.

And the genetics!

How about his immediate post match demeanor. Cold, cold stare at RBY and not a hint of celebration. Not surprised to be there. That is a bad man.

As far as I can tell these are the only bracket changes: 133: #11 Conner McGonagle (Lehigh) is out, everyone 33-12 went up one, Ethan Oakley (Appalachian State) was added as 33 149: #9 Jonathan Millner (Appalachian State) is out, everyone 33-10 sent up one, Don Demas (Cal Ploy) was added as 33. Lowest seed ever for a former AA? Updated brackets are on here on Track Wrestling. As for the contest I created, I have updated picks to reflect the changes above. You can still enter this contest here. There are 3 ways to play, you can do just 1 or all 3: AA Overachiever Top seed (1-8) Underachiever First Round Upset This takes a few minutes to fill out. The contests to fill out the full bracket or pick the top 8 for all 10 weights is too much for me, and last I checked they have not updated the brackets so that makes it a bit tricky.

Reminder to consider this conteet: https://forms.gle/qNWvZgZrFYiUrct69. I have made a change so that you can now enter 1, 2, or all 3 contests. With bracket change at 133 and 149 (I think), hopefully all who have entered have saved a link to update their brackets. If not, lmk and I'll email you with a personalized link. Or based on time stamp of your entry I can adjust picks accordingly based on final brackets. Thought I'd share my thoughts on on of my AA overachiever picks: At 197, for me it was between Dean (9 seed) or Warner (15 seed). Both are 3 time AAs (Dean 7, 2, 1; Warner 7,4,2 I think). Warner has more potential return because he is a bit lower seed, but he has looked off this year. And honestly I can't see Dean not placing top 8, and I could easily see him in the 1-4 range. So for me, safe money goes on Dean. For high seed overachiever, at 125 Poulin and Smith seem like high seeds that could easily finish off of the podium. Others who have entered seem to agree.

Apologies for nerding out here... if we were to assume my 87/75 chances of Carr and O'Toole each getting to the final were correct (which would be a big mistake), then the probabilities of the 4 options are: Carr and O'Toole in finals: .85*.75 = 64% Carr and someone else: .85 * (1-.75) = 21% O'Toole and Someone else: (1-.85) * .75 = 11% Two other people: (1-.85) * (1-.75) = 4% If I was building my original 55/35 numbers from the above, I would then assign likelihood of Carr or O'Toole winning in each of the first 3 scenarios above. But of course I did not do that, I just guessed the numbers. I could back into those numbers pretty easily though, but that that point I'm just assigning percentages to support my original numbers. What do I know, it will probably be Hamiti over Ramirez...

Your question makes me realize my percentages were incomplete. Here is some more info, for example: 165: Carr (55%) / O'Toole (35%) / 10% I give Carr a 55% chance to win it all. I expect him to meet O'Toole in the final, and I give O'Toole a 35% chance to win it all. I give the rest of the field 10% chance to win it all. You didn't ask this, but If I were to break it down further, in this case I would give Carr about an 85% chance to make the finals (since I am pulling these numbers out of my ass I might as will do it with confidence) and O'Toole a 75% chance to get to the finals. In retrospect my maybe 10% was too high for the rest of the field, but there are a lot of good wrestlers at that weight and who knows what will happen. Note: all of my finalists were on opposite sides of the bracket as they should be. It would be possible (but not at all likely) for my 2 most likely winners to come from the same side of the bracket. As far as what you asked (confidence that another wrestler makes the finals), that could be derived from the last 2 percentages that I provided (85 and 75) . But there are really 3 cases: 1. Carr and someone else, 2. O' Toole and someone else, and 3. two other finalists. The math is not too hard (was a math major decades ago) but I'll leave that to someone else

Key: 1st (% Confidence they will win) / 2nd (% Confidence that they willwin) / (% confidence that someone else in the field wins, with 0 meaning < 1%): 125: Lee (95) / Glory (5%) / 0% 133: RBY (65%) / FIx (30%) / 5% 141: Alirez (40%) / Woods (35%) / 25% 149: Yanni (90%) / Sasso (5%) / 5% 157: AOC (45%) / Robb (25%) / 30% 165: Carr (55%) / O'Toole (35%) / 10% 174: Starocci (90%) / Lewis (10%) / 0% 184: Brooks (75%) / Keckeisen (15%) / 10% 197: Bonaccorsi (25%) / Elam (20%) / 55% Hvy: Parris (45%) / Kerk (30%) / 25%

I got the idea for this contest from the Dark Horse thread. I then came up with a couple of other questions and built a google form and a scoring system around this: https://forms.gle/qNWvZgZrFYiUrct69 There are three parts of this competition; you select a wrestler for each weight. Here are the three parts: AA Overachievers: Select wrestlers that you think will AA and outperform their seed. Points awarded = seed - AA placement. Valid values 2-32. No points awarded if wrestler does not AA. Non-AA Underachievers: Pick top 8 seeded wrestlers that you don't think will AA. Points awarded = 9 - seed. Valid values 1-8. No points awarded if wrestler AAs. First Round Upset: Pick a first round upset. Points awarded = seed - 16. Valid values 17-32 (pigtail matches ignored). No points awarded if wrestler loses first round match. To provide real-life examples, these would have been the highest individual scorers across all weight last year: AA Overachiever: 197 Gavin Hoffman, 21 seed/6th place = 15 points. Non-AA Underachiever: 141 Jayden Eierman, 2 seed = 7 points. First Round Upset: 174 Tyler Eischens, 26 seed= 10 points. Remember the objective here is not pick the highest scorer at each weight but rather to maximize your total points. For example, for AA Overachiever you may think a 7 for a particular weight is likely the make the finals, which would earn you 5 or 6 points. Whereas picking a 25 seed to AA would be much less likely, although the upside would be higher (17 points if they came in 8th). So it come down to risk/reward. A few more notes: I am asking for your email, but this is only so that you can get your responses emailed to you which also gives you the opportunity to change your picks right until the tournament starts. If you don’t’ want to provide your email just put in a dummy email. I am asking for your forum member name so I can announce the winners. But this can be filled out by someone who doesn't have a member name, they would just need to enter a name for this contest. Rather than selecting wrestlers by name you have to select by seed at each weight. This saved me a lot of time in building the form and will make it easy to compile results. I hope some of you enjoy this. I don’t know if I will get zero of you to fill it out, or 10, or more. But it only took me about an hour to build and I think it will kind of fun and give some additional things to root for.

We called the move a head lever in NJ in the 80s. Really only works for a turn against seriously overmatched opponents. As for post-match interviews - the gold standard interviewee was Sammy Brooks talking about his mullet. I never tire of watching that. I also liked the honesty of Real Wood's answer. I get a bit tired of the same answers: 'I trust my coaches. I have a great support system. All glory to god.' I don't mean to knock anyone's religiosity but how about some real talk. Yanni mentioning having some nuts and Spencer's 'excuses are for wusses' were real, if a little harsh. As for the interview questions: I think they really missed an opportunity to ask Sasso about wearing his backpack to the mat. That was unusual enough that it warranted a question. One last thing about Real Woods: I loved the mutual respect and sportsmanship that Woods and Hardy showed after their match. A real testament to both of their characters.

All good choices. Max Murin for sure. Someone from Purdue - I’ll say Kendall Coleman. Silas Allred. A week ago I would have said Malik Heinselman. In his stead, I’m going with another undersized 125 - Stevo Poulin. Looked good in Big 12 finals.

Definitely true, just read this on the tOSU wrestling site. I'm really bummed about this and feel super bad for him; I've been following his career since he pinned a kid from my son's high school team in about 15 seconds in the Colorado state tournament. Would have been tough for him to AA this year but he was definitely capable of sneaking in. The irony is that the weight class really clears out next year and he would have been in a great position to do even better had he redshirted this year. But I don't think that would even be an option for him at this point. And it's good for kids to get on with their lives, not stay in college forever (seven years of college down the drain!)

Damn, I must have missed the championships where Lee won his 4th.

Another odd story. There was a senior 188 pounder (biggest weight at the time under HWT) on our team my freshman year who had wrestled all four years. Not sure how he did in prior years, but for the year we overlapped he lost every match. Got pinned in the first period every time. I'm convinced there was some major mental block going on with him. Our HWT was pretty decent, won a bunch of matches and took 3rd in district, and our 188 guy generally beat him in practice. Even beat him in a wrestle-offs before he cut down to 188. But when he got on the mat, some kind of switch shut off; he would go out all aggressive but always ended up on his back super quickly. But he never gave up nor seemed to get overly discouraged. Not sure I would have stuck with it with those results.

Definitely in the middle, as per my moniker. Freshman year, first year of wrestling every, started at JV at 119 and went 5-0, after 2 pound allowance dropped down to 114 and was thrown to the wolves at varsity. I was strong and kept most losses to a decision. Ended up going 3-12 on varsity; interestingly one of my 3 wins was a 27-4 win (no tech falls back then) against another freshman who became a regional champ his junior year, a big deal in NJ. Big jump sophomore year, full season around .500, got some league honors, better records junior and senior year but both seasons cut short due to injury, so it all added up to a little better than .500. Not many sports you can start as a freshman and be a 4 year varsity starter. The highlight of my career though was coming in 2nd in the intramural tournament my senior year of college at Cornell, got teched in the final by a guy who had just quit the wrestling team the week before. I still say he should not have been eligible !

Assuming he wins out this year and beats Fix again for his third title, then over the past 3 years he's on a par with the best ever around his weight. But when you factor in the first 2 years where he was very good but beatable, he's not in the conversation for best ever.

Two last year - also Ridge Lovett at 149. I’d be surprised if we didn’t see at least one this year. Will make predictions after seeding.

I said any of, not all of. He would likely have to beat one of them to finish third, unless at least one of them lost in an upset. More to the point: I don't see him finishing ahead of any of these three.

I think Murin finally AAs this year. But 3rd is not realistic, particularly if Gomez is not out. Murin’s not beating any of Yanni, Sasso, or Gomez.

I think refs generally handle it well when there is no scoring on feet. Typically they let them go when both are active or give a warning to the less aggressive wrestler. Here's a suggested tweak to the 1 minute of riding with no scoring: both wrestlers back to their feet, no warning/no escape point. Bottom man gets out of suffocating ride and gets opportunity to get a takedown, and top man can score again without giving up an escape point. Moves folkstyle a little closer to freestyle, and reduces non-productive riding.

Here are my dark horses, all ranked 14 or lower (yes that is arbitrary, but I like a few 14s) who have never AAd. Some are stretches for sure: 125: Braxton Brown (Maryland) #18 133: Aaron Nagao (Minnesota) #15 141: Vince Cornella (Cornell) # 16 149: Quinn Kinner (Rider) # 23 157: Chase Saldate (Michigan State) # 15 165: Caleb Fish (Michigan State) #25 174: Rocky Jordan (Chattanooga) #14 184: Lenny Pinto (Nebraska) #16 197: Cameron Caffey (Michigan State) #14 Hwt: AJ Nevills (South Dakota State) # 14 (Almost picked Jason Bullock here) And no I did not go to Michigan State, I went to the real Big Red (hint: not Nebraska)

Carter Starocci. He can clearly back it up, but based on post -match interviews he seems pretty arrogant - especially for a guy that is so vocal about his faith.