NCAA DI Rankings Updated (12/12/2023)

NCAA DI Rankings have been released for this week. It wasn't an overly busy weekend, so there are not major changes like last week, post-CKLV. 

A couple of notes though:

The highest profile wrestler to suffer a loss over the weekend was Jesse Mendez (Ohio State) who was defeated by Cole Matthews (Pittsburgh) during Sunday's dual. You may notice that Mendez hasn't moved from his #3 spot at 141 lbs. Based on who Mendez defeated in Vegas; #4 Ryan Jack, #6 Brock Hardy and #16 Vince Cornella, coupled with the wrestlers that Jack/Hardy have beaten (or lost to); keeping Mendez in place makes sense for the time being. Should he suffer more losses, he'll drop. Matthews has had a bit of a rough start, but gets a bump from the Mendez win. 

The most time and brain power were spent trying to make sense of the wrestlers between #10-#17 at 285 lbs. Over the weekend, Taylor beat Doucet, who beat Heindselman. That group has generally all exchanged wins with each other and could be ranked a handful of different ways. 

Last week, shortly after rankings were released, information trickled out of Penn State that Shayne Van Ness was lost for the year due to injury. He has been removed from the 149 lb rankings.

A couple of housekeeping notes:

The next set of rankings will be released on Wednesday, December 20th, rather than the normal Tuesday release. Collegiate Duals are Monday/Tuesday and I'd rather not release rankings in between days of an event. 

This will be the last week in which wrestlers who have not competed in 2023-24 are included. They will be removed with the next rankings update. Once they compete, they'll be reinserted at a fair spot.