92 kg Junior World Team member Rocky Elam (Photo/Sam Janicki, SJanickiPhoto.com)This past weekend, USA Wrestling decided their representatives for the Junior world trials in freestyle and Greco-Roman. On the freestyle side, there were some clear statistical standout performers, including many who will represent the U.S. in Russia this August. The following looks at some of those top statistical performers across the 10 weights.
Braxton Amos put himself on an island
Amos set himself apart from the rest of the field on the junior level. After shutting out the field in the Greco-Roman tournament, he moved to freestyle, where he outscored his opponents by a combined 55 to 4 score and made the World team at 97 kg. On a per-minute basis, that equates to 6.48 points per minute and 0.47 points allowed per minute for a +6.01 differential. As you can see in the following scatter plot, Amos' performance basically put himself on an island statistically.
Including his five matches from the Greco tournament, Amos' point differential climbs all the way to +7.79. In that bracket, he outscored his opponents by a combined 45 to 0.
Another strong performer in terms of point differential was Donnell Washington. The Indiana wrestler will represent the U.S. at 79 kg. Washington scored 4.17 points per minute while allowing only 0.55 points per minute for a +3.62 differential, which was the second-highest behind Amos in the tournament.
Rocky Elam shows off stingy defense
After becoming an All-American as a true freshman for Missouri, Elam will now make the trip to Russia as part of the junior World team at 92 kg. A big part of his success this past weekend was his ability to prevent his opponents from scoring. He allowed only five points, or 0.22 points per minute, through four matches. No other wrestler surrendered fewer points on a per-minute basis.
Arizona State's Julian Chlebove also had an impressive defensive performance on his way to the quarterfinals. Despite dropping a 3-1 decision against Jesse Mendez in that round, Chlebove allowed the second fewest points per minute in the tournament at 0.27. He allowed only four points across his four matches.
Boom or bust for Cullan Schriever
Schriever wrestled only three matches for Iowa during his first season on campus. He certainly made up for lost time this past weekend. He wrestled nine matches, which tied him with Tagen Jamison, Joey Bianchi, Evan Yant, AJ Kovacs and Caleb Rathjen for most in the tournament. Despite finishing fourth at 61 kg, Schriever was able to pick up seven match termination victories, which was the most of any competitor in the field. Yant and Beau Bartlett finished second with six match termination victories each.
Carson Taylor only had high scoring matches
Taylor went 3-2 and failed to place at 61 kg, but he certainly made the most of his time on the mat and showed himself to be a very exciting wrestler. Taylor not only scored his fair share of points, but he also let his opponents run it up. His matches had an average of 21 total points scored, which was the most among wrestlers who had at least five matches.
The Grand View wrestler dropped a 22-13 match against Princeton's Nick Masters. Those 35 combined points were tied for the second-highest point total in a match behind Elise Brown and Aydin Rix McElhinney who combined for a 47-point bout in the 74 kg bracket.
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