Maybe this will help clarify how the brackets are done. At first glance they DO look biased sometimes. But if you look at the actual formula & how it’s applied, it really clears things up. So for my example, I just used the 120# wt class for the NC SS. The 4 feeder regionals (in alpha.order) are:
A)North Mont
B)Pend Heights
C)Perry Meridian
D)Richmond
So you take the 4 placers of each regional and give each one a “code” name. The 1st place kid from North Mont is Carson Eldred, so we’ll give him A1. The 1st placer from Pend Heights will be B1. And you go on through them and end with A1-A4, B1-B4, etc.
The formula says we’ll do Reg A vs Reg C, and Reg B vs Reg D for the 120# class.
Plug all that into your standard 16 man single elim bracket where #1 seeds wrestle the #4 seed from their paired regional and you get the following:
Each regional is represented in each Qtr bracket so you dont see anyone from your own regional until after the ticket round. The real bummer is that some regionals are just really strong, therefore all 4 placers could be total BA’s, while another is only strong in the top 1 or 2. But there’s really no way to control that...