wrestlenewbie

You are correct. There is only one weigh-in per day (I did not write that sentence particularly well). My understanding is day 2 is the hardest for wrestlers who are cutting. Given my belt size I have no personal experience to rely on here. But I know I get angry hungry as the day progresses. I also agree with SIACfans point that there are two sides to the interpretive coin and that Lee's giving up points is McKenna's taking points. But this is an Indiana thread. I'm wearing Indiana colored glasses (and I'm not even from Indiana). I feel like these two guys are so closely matched that the next meeting could turn on something as small as stamina in the middle of a tournament. Of course, then I choose Lee. McKenna has come out hard and fast all three times to great effect. He has also attacked strategically in the closing seconds of periods to great effect. And Lee has finished stronger all three times. I choose to assume Lee can clean up his two deficiencies before McKenna can gain stamina.

I would argue that McKenna was gassed at the end of all three matches. Last year the difference was he had riding time. Lee gave up a bad take down with 1 second left on the clock at the end of 2 to loose the lead. He tied it at 6 in the third but couldn't overcome the riding time point. The dual this year Lee was down 5-1 after 1 and then out scored McKenna 6-1 the rest of the way. When Lee got the final take down with about 30 seconds to go McKenna had nothing left and barely made an attempt to get off the mat. In the B1Gs it was almost a similar story. McKenna goes up 5-1 with Lee giving up another bad take down with 3 seconds to go in the first. The difference this time is McKenna puts on a clinic on how to defend. There are at least two shots that look like he is definitely giving up 2, but he keeps wrestling and fights off the take down (Flo calls it Matrix level D). In the third McKenna is very slow to return to neutral and Lee does get the take down on his second attempt with about 2 seconds left. I think if Lee finishes the first attempt in the third we see the same ending as last time. But he didn't. And all credit goes to McKenna for stopping him. That said, let me paint a scenario for you. Its Friday night and Lee is facing McKenna in the semis. They both wrestled Friday morning. McKenna looks bigger than Lee. That is because he is bigger. He has to cut harder to make weight. He has to stay at weight all day. Hard to do without an effect on the energy levels. Lee is more natural at 141 and is less affected by multiple weigh ins. Now Lee avoids giving up the silly take down with zeros almost showing on the clock. It is a close match because they are closely matched, but McKenna finds himself even more gassed than normal in the third. Lee/Diakomiholis under the lights Saturday night.

The match wasn't in Rec Hall. It was at OSU. So if home mat played huge doesn't that makes Lee's win more impressive, not less?

So would you be more impressed if Lee won in front of a hostile OSU crowd instead of Rec Hall?

I wanna talk about recency bias. I have been thinking about some of these brackets and the seeding decisions I find odd and it occurs to me that a lot of it comes down to recency bias. I have it, but the seeding committee does not. Relative seeds for Red v Carr and Storr, Parris v Jensen, Jennings, Dhesi, Pantaleo v Deakin can all be explained by the LACK of recency bias. Red had a tough season, but finished strong and winds up seeded well below the guys he just beat. No benefit for recent results. On the flip side, Parris finishes 7th at Big Tens (as the 3 seed, I think) but gets the 5 seed anyway. No penalty for recent results. Related to Red, Mike Carr lays an egg, finishing 8 in his conference, but remains 6th nationally. Again no penalty for recent results. Related to Parris, Dhesi comes in as the highest returning AA, but has a good record on a weak schedule. Here they look to be looking back to last year. That definitely raises the tide for Parris. Pantaleo beats Deakin head to head just days earlier, but Deakin came in with the better resume. No benefit for recent results for Pantaleo, no penalty for Deakin. Normally we talk about recency bias as a bad thing (especially when analyzing sports), but in this case is it a bad thing to weight the past more than the present in determining seeds for the present?

Spot on

Yep. I go back and forth on his seed. Not much reward for taking second at the B1G tourney, but then the D1 record even after a 3-1 weekend is just 12-11. He finally got some wins over higher ranked wrestlers, but he also lost some odd ones early on. Highs and lows. Ups and downs. Maybe 16 is right, just unfortunate.

Carr with the 6 is a gift to the bottom half of the bracket

Parris at 5 is a bit of a head scratcher. Of the 5 guys he lost to 4 are below him. 9, 12, 16 and 17.

On FRL they say they know nothing, but they point out that the big brace came since the Rutgers dual (2/17). And that his mobility is impaired. Seems more than nagging. By their estimate Fix moves to #1 rank. But distinguishing rank from seed they could still see Micic #1 maybe.

Tell that to Mike Carr.

I have no opinion on the job the Purdue coach is doing, but from a pure math/logic standpoint I am not enamored with your analysis. Wrestling to seed just means the seeding committee accurately assessed their ability, not that they had a good performance. The contra argument would be that their seeds were too low and the coach has the ability to impact that. With 7 of 10 wrestlers in the bottom half of the bracket wrestling to seed seems a minimum standard. Using a plus/minus analysis it looks like they actually wrestled to one spot below their overall seed. 125: +1 133: 0 141: 0 149: 0 157: 0 165: 0 174: -2 184: +1 195: -2 285: +1 Total: -1

Heavyweight is insane this year. You feel bad for whoever gets 2 and 3 knowing that one of them definitely won't make the final. It almost feels like they need a mini-round robin round for these three guys.

Is it possible to have a Chad Red thread without reference to Nick Lee? Or vice versa? Apparently, forever linked. The author's point is well taken. For someone new to the sport to see the single leg defense, hopping on one foot and avoiding getting taken down through an insane combination of balance and flexibility, it is truly amazing. I still don't fully understand how he does it.

Lee with a revenge statement against Moran. Lee with the 11-3 major. He was in complete control the whole way. Able to finish all his shots unlike in the dual loss. Lee moves to the third place bout.

Interesting. You definitely like Michigan. Do you think they take the team title too? Remember PSU has only won 1 of the last 4 conference tourneys.

First three sessions are on BTN plus. Finals are on BTN. https://bigten.org/sports/2019/1/29/WREST_CHAMPS_19.aspx

In the weights with 9 auto qualifiers they seed all the way down to 14. And they will have wrestling to 9th place in those weights (125, 141, 157 and 165). Weights with fewer than 9 auto qualifiers get seeded to 8.

The pre-seeds are done by all 14 coaches submitting their ranks. At the seeding meeting Friday, if a wrestler is within 3 points of another, his coach can make the case why the seeds should change. Not sure how points are determined from the original submissions. I think it is pretty rare to see changes from pre-seed to seed.

On the other hand... I just read that a seat on a Soyuz rocket to the international space station goes for $82,000,000. Perhaps that is what the NCAA is using for comps.

Tickets were very rare this year and only went on sale after the schools got their allocations. Anywhere you go you here every school increased the number they requested, but got the smallest (percentage) allocation they have ever had. It was so tight this year that the old trick of signing up for UT Chattanooga season tickets to get on their list for NCAA tickets did not work too well this year. Demand has grown but the past two years have been in stadiums that hold 20,600 and 19,800. The hope is that next year in Minneapolis the seating will be configured to hold around 25,000. But, the NCAA will still wait until after they figure out the school allocations before anything goes "on sale to the public." I put that in quotes because it seems like the only tickets available for the public are being re-sold on the NCAA affiliated official ticket re-selling sight, Primesport. And the numbers they are asking are exorbitant. Right after the allocations were done there were only 16 seats being offered on Primesport ranging from $800 in the back half of section 225 to over $2,000 for section 111. Now there are 103 tickets offered ranging between $575 (for 1) to $2,990. The lower level starts at $1500. There is even a block of 12 available now, which sure seems like a group that got tickets from the NCAA deciding to cash in. All in all, this year it feels like the height of cynicism. It feels like the tickets are being used as a way to let people or groups with NCAA connections, but not necessarily an interest in wrestling, to profit from getting a rare thing that they can re-sell at substantial profit. Last year I was able to get tickets at the last minute to Quicken Loans, but only because the stadium had withheld a group of tickets without letting anyone know. Then they released them for sale at what I thought was a crazy price (until I saw this year's prices) but only through the ticket app that the Cavs are trying to get going. There were a lot of complaints about that, and I felt a little dirty, but that dirty feeling was easier to handle while watching six sessions of wrestling over three days.

Steveson is actually 5 inches shorter than Coon.

In about 11 months

Flo just posted the match replay so I went and watched. On the pro side, Todrank absolutely did not back down. He went after Nolf's leg repeatedly. Sure there were moments when he was on his bicycle, but on balance he was a wrestler not a track star. But then the leg and the shimmy happened. He was having some fun with it. But how much fun is it to wrestle an angry Nolf? Nolf went in HARD on the double from space right after the shimmy. His forehead catches Todrank pretty square and you see Todrank clutch his head as he goes down. Then the pretend cut from Nolf right into the cradle. Mr. Knee meet Mr. Head. Mr Head, Mr. Knee. Who is having fun now? The hand clap from Nolf is the most emotion I can remember seeing from him after a dual meet, so I think it did wake the bear (lion?).

This is what they say: "No one's going to be happy with this weight. Carr went undefeated, but didn't wrestle against Nick Lee and didn't get a chance to beat McKenna as the Buckeye missed the dual at Illinois. Following my argument at 165, plus the case I made in a prior 141 article, I'd like to see Lee get the one but I don't think that's how it will happen."