Which teams are the best 5 over the past 10 years?

[Dark Energy]

Clearly Penn State is #1.  I’m pretty confident Iowa is #2 but someone can prove me wrong.  Who would round out the top 5?  I’ll call these the upper echelon of D1 wrestling now. 

[Jason Bryant]

What are your stipulations?
NCAA finish? All Americans? Champs? Dual wins? Dual Rank. Conference titles? Academic finish tied to placement? APR?

Lots of ways to quantify an answer - just wondering where I should start with the data mining.

[Wrestleknownothing]

30 minutes ago, Dark Energy said:

Clearly Penn State is #1.  I’m pretty confident Iowa is #2 but someone can prove me wrong.  Who would round out the top 5?  I’ll call these the upper echelon of D1 wrestling now. 

Iowa is absolutely number 2 based on average NCAA finish. Can't remember the rest off the top on my head.

[Paul158]

Penn State number 1

Iowa or Ohio State number 2 and 3

[MidwestMan]

Just off my head without going back and doing the "homework", and with just a bit of home state bias: Michigan, Cornell, Mizzou.

[Wrestleknownothing]

 

2 hours ago, Dark Energy said:

Clearly Penn State is #1.  I’m pretty confident Iowa is #2 but someone can prove me wrong.  Who would round out the top 5?  I’ll call these the upper echelon of D1 wrestling now. 

Will you accept Top 20 instead?

[Dark Energy]

JB - open to people’s best thinking.  Chart above looking like a good approach.  

[nhs67]

But hold on!  Clearly Smith is doing a horrible job at OSU and should be fired!

[Wrestleknownothing]

1 hour ago, nhs67 said:

But hold on!  Clearly Smith is doing a horrible job at OSU and should be fired!

It is recency bias. He has had two rough finishes in the last 4 years. From 2019 they went 13, 3, 3, 14.

[MPhillips]

2 hours ago, nhs67 said:

But hold on!  Clearly Ryan is doing a horrible job at OSU and should be fired!

FIFY

We hear this regularly...

[Paul158]

3 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

 

Will you accept Top 20 instead?

Another great job. Accepted.

[ionel]

6 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

 

Will you accept Top 20 instead?

So on average Penn St is not a national championship team and if we round to single digit they are a second place team.  Will Penn St be looking for a new coach?

[Dark Energy]

Looks like Ohio State is clearly top 5 … strong case for 3.

And yes OKState … I do admit to a recency bias!  Data tells a story that I didn’t recall.  All good.  For past 10 yrs strong case for top 5 even if have slipped.  Michigan on the other hand seems to have good momentum.

Cornell and Mizzou … also options for top 5.

[Hwt1]

But hold on! Clearly Dresser is doing a great job at ISU and should be coach of year!

Edited October 29, 2023 by Hwt1

[Gus]

Honestly surprised how low ASU is on the list. I thought they would be closer to 10 than 20. 

[Wrestleknownothing]

6 hours ago, Gus said:

Honestly surprised how low ASU is on the list. I thought they would be closer to 10 than 20. 

They are the inverse Oklahoma State. Their last four are seventh best. Their first six are not in the top twenty.

[MPhillips]

13 hours ago, Dark Energy said:

Looks like Ohio State is clearly top 5 … strong case for 3.

Clearly...

2013–14    6th
2014–15   1st
2015–16    3rd
2016–17    2nd
2017–18    2nd
2018–19    2nd
2019–20    Canceled
2020-21    9th
2021-22    13th

2022-23    4th

[boconnell]

21 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

It is recency bias. He has had two rough finishes in the last 4 years. From 2019 they went 13, 3, 3, 14.

 

It's also an issue of expectations.  When most teams have an occasional 14th, nobody cares.  When OSU has one (or two), it's noteworthy.  The same would be true if Iowa got a 14th.

[Wrestleknownothing]

Oops.

Thank you all for not pointing out that I had failed to include 2023 results in my prior table. I appreciate your forbearance.

Corrected:

[Dark Energy]

Well, then that is 11 years.  Please remove 2013.  

[ionel]

4 minutes ago, Dark Energy said:

Well, then that is 11 years.  Please remove 2013.  

Why is it I see a potential 3 way bet between Ban, Bob and Wkn?  

[Wrestleknownothing]

6 minutes ago, Dark Energy said:

Well, then that is 11 years.  Please remove 2013.  

No 2020.

2 minutes ago, ionel said:

Why is it I see a potential 3 way bet between Ban, Bob and Wkn?  

No three way. Why do you wish bad things for me?

[Wrestleknownothing]

Did a little something different with this one.

Rather than look at schools I decided to look at coaches. Using the top 10 schools that have had the same head coach for at least the last five seasons (sorry Cornell) I looked at their individual and average finishes over their tenure.

[Wrestleknownothing]

Then I looked at the best five year run for each:

Most interesting to me is that Manning is on his best 5 year run now in spite of the length of his career. Let's hear it @jajensen09

[ionel]

1 hour ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

No 2020.

No three way. Why do you wish bad things for me?

Ban bad, Bob bad, betting bad.