maligned

Interesting developments here in the race for the last 2 automatic wildcards. Bellmont has no underclassmen left so Columbia City is unofficially in. Bellmont own the tiebreaker over Norwell in their current dead heat, but Cale Gray wins Friday night at 195 for Norwell to keep them in the hunt. If Gray can get one more win any time today and place at least 7th, Norwell would move ahead of Bellmont unofficially into the final automatic spot. The team left out will be the highest qualifying score entering the voting process with a number of other teams.

CP are a fantastic tournament team and will be next year too but this scoring system is identifying next year's best duals teams, not tourney teams. We've had 9 or 10 of the following season's 3A year-end Top 10 duals teams in the event the last 5 years so the scoring has worked very well for identifying the right teams. Remember, all 14 sectional starters score and underclassmen are more heavily weighted. The money round in 3A is the first round of semi-state. Top duals teams usually have more than half their team advance into the 2nd round of semi-state and beyond. CP had only 6 beyond SS round one and bring 4 of those back so their score has them just on the fringe, but with a very strong resume that I'm sure will be viewed very well by the voters.

Last reminder

Next year will be the third year that brackets are set up with consideration for avoiding local opponents until the last two rounds. Meaning hopefully they'll only see each other if placement matches dictate it happening.

Don't forget that the deadline for submitting injury and transfer ineligibility information for Team State qualification is due on Wednesday!! This applies to current sophomores or juniors in 1A who advanced to at least regional last year and in 2A who advanced to semi-state or further last year. See Page 5 of this document for instructions to submit 2 minutes of information that could help your team's score: https://indianamat.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=956 IF YOU THINK YOUR SCHOOL HAS ONE OF THESE SITUATIONS TO SUBMIT, PLEASE ALERT YOUR COACH AND DON'T ASSUME THEY'VE ALREADY DONE IT. Information processed so far for Bellmont, Jay County, Shenandoah, Adams Central, and Carmel.

Updated through semi-state

Updated through semi-state

Now updated through semi-state.

Which of these guys are non-big boys? You expect a few of the big-boy improvement stories because mastery of a couple positions or finishes can translate into drastically different results--but smaller guys making a big jump is less common for sure.

So much of this issue is just about depth. There's no doubting there's serious high-end talent still in the DAC, South Bend/Mishawaka, Lafayette. But depth is way down. And the Categories are strictly a measure of depth and crowdedness--not high end talent. TONS of forfeits out of the ECC semi-state. Average wrestlers per sectional weight class and per regional weight class by semi-state: Evansville: 7.7 & 15.4 Fort Wayne: 7.6 & 15.2 New Castle: 7.3 & 14.7 East Chicago: 6.5 & 13.1 It's not very difficult math to know that you'll have about 5 random kids out of 15.4 at the same quality as the best 4 out of 13.1. The same is true when you're looking at sectional depth of 7.7 versus 6.5.

They're in a Category 5 sectional and a Category 6 regional. That means top 5 at each weight from their sectional get regional points and top 6 from their regional get semi-state first round points because that's how many those sites' teams would get through in at average level sites. Franklin has 2 SS1's, 9 regional, and 3 sectional 5/6--but their site Category levels upgrade them to 8 SS1's, 5 regional, and 1 sectional 5/6. They're about done, though. As you can see from the "Avail" stat on the leaderboard, lots of teams will pass them this week. They'll most likely end up in the 15-20 range on the final leaderboard--a fairly conservative estimate of their quality next year considering they were already on the edge of the top 20 this year and they bring back everyone.

Another stat I just added is "Avail"--which is the number of points each team has available to score this weekend at Semi-State. In 3A: 6 points for non-seniors advancing to SS Round 2 5 points for seniors advancing to SS Round 2 3 additional points for both seniors and underclassmen advancing to state <Note: a few teams have 4th place qualifiers who didn't earn Semi-State points due to their Regional difficulty level being Category 3. If those individuals were to win first round matches, they would be upgraded directly to Semi-State second round points (a 12-point jump for underclassmen and 9-point jump for seniors). For that reason, their teams have inflated points available totals going into round 1.>

Another stat I just added is "Avail"--which is the number of points each team has available to score this weekend at Semi-State. In 2A: 5 points for non-seniors advancing to SS Round 2 2 points for seniors advancing to SS Round 2 2 additional points for both seniors and underclassmen advancing to state <Note: a few teams have 4th place qualifiers who didn't earn Semi-State points due to their Regional difficulty level being Category 3. If those individuals were to win first round matches, they would be upgraded directly to Semi-State second round points (a 9-point jump for underclassmen and 4-point jump for seniors). For that reason, their teams have inflated points available totals going into round 1.>

Another stat I just added is "Avail"--which is the number of points each team has available to score this weekend at Semi-State. In 1A: 3 points for non-seniors advancing to SS Round 2 1 additional point for non-seniors advancing to state <Note: a few teams have 4th place qualifiers who didn't earn Semi-State points due to their Regional difficulty level being Category 3. If those individuals were to win first round matches, they would be upgraded directly to Semi-State second round points (an 8-point jump for underclassmen and 2-point increase for seniors). For that reason their teams have inflated points available totals going into round 1.>