fishbane

The national team is made up out of the top 4 at the OTT. In non-olympic years it's only the top 3 at the WTT/Final X

JB used a lot of these same tactics in Final X last year with Chance. He got booed at times and that was in his home state of NJ.

Escobedo wrestled at worlds at 57kg in 2013. Looks like Blanc and Escobedo wrestled at the trials in 2016, so he's another one high school recruits may have seen wrestle live.

Here are less stupid proposed bracket for 65kg and 86kg. This keeps Nick Lee and Aaron Brooks in the position of the 1 seed which sounds about right to me since they both defeated the wrestler with the semifinal bye in their last meeting. I have the consolations by standard bracketing and it doesn't work out quite as perfect as 2021 74kg did, but it's still better than what was actually used. There are two byes in the consi quarters (R12) which are created by the missing quarterfinals and R16 matches in the championship bracket. Two wrestlers could be moved from the cons quarters to fill the byes in the R12. This would make it so no quarterfinal loser would have a bye to the cons semi 1 round (top 8 finish). This would leave a single first round consolation match at 65 and a full consi quarter (r12) round at 86kg. I'd probably lean to placing the losers of match 1 and 5 into this pigtail as they would likely be the worst seeded and the last matches to be filled when entering the bracket. So this would be a bye at 86KG where there its no match 1 (Brooks has a bye). I've also attached a visualization of this. 65kbBracketLessStupid.pdf65kbBracketLessStupid.pdf 86kbBracketLessStupid.pdf86kbBracketLessStupid.pdf ConsolationsModified.pdf

They look set to go out on a low note in men's freestyle at least. It looks like TMWC will sweep the men's places. Any change Jordan Burroughs, Zahid Valencia or anyone else can grab a spot from the Titans?

I had thought about this and I also think the wrestler with the bye should be seeded. I would guarantee the wrestler with the bye a top 4 seed and just more him to that position in the bracket. In the case of 65kg Retherford could be the top seed, but there is an argument for Nick Lee to be the top seed. The last time Retherford wrestled 65kg he lost to Nick Lee. Retherford has never medaled at 65kg. Diakomihalis has beaten Retherford at 65kg and is the only wrestler to medal at the weight. I could see someone putting him anywhere between 1-3. Ideally I'd want the wrestlers distributed so the top 2 guys meet in the finals. I could see this being a slight issue if two wrestlers have byes. This could have been the case this year if Arujau had gone up. I don't think many would have him as a top 2 seed at 65 kg. In this case I say give both Aruba and Retherford guaranteed top 4 seeds. Putting no further restrictions on the seeding could lead to the two guys with byes wrestling each other in the semis if Retherford is 2 behind Nick Lee and Arujau gets the 3. Some people might not like that because their opponent will also be fresh. I'm okay with that as they still only need 1 win to make the final and they will have a big advantage over their finals opponent, but some will want them separated in the bracket. I think this is a minor point.

You're not wrong. Here is the document with the procedures - https://assets.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blteb7d012fc7ebef7f/bltf8d10db3aa328be4/650367e19bcd1b10091d0862/2024_MFS_OLY_Procedures.pdf Looking at the edit history at the end of the document it was created by Megan Ball and reviewed and signed off on by Rich Bender, Cody Bickley, and Mallory Velte. I suppose we should be complaining to them. Maybe they will spend more than a minute reviewing it next time. All of their email addresses are in the document...

There would be byes, but they would be less messed up than they are now. Below is the consolation bracket from 74kg in 2021. There were 8 wrestlers in the bracket. The championship bracket had three wrestlers on the top and 5 on the bottom including Dake who had a bye to the semis. The consolation bracket contained the 6 wrestlers who lost before the final with two on the top and 4 on the bottom. If I were to draw them up it would look something like this Championship Nolf 1 Nolf bye 7 Nolf Gantt 10 2 Gantt Joseph Nolf Massa 12 3 Massa bye 8 Wick bye 4 Wick Wick Dake Marsteller 5 Marsteller bye 9 Marsteller bye 11 6 Carr Carr Dake Dake and the consolation would look something like this Bye (missing quarter) Joseph Joseph (loser 1/2) Carr Carr (loser 9) Carr Wick Bye (loser 3/4) Wick (loser 10) Marsteller Marsteller (Loser 11) Massa (loser 8) Massa Marsteller bye (loser 5/6) Massa Gantt (loser 7) Gantt Bye (missing R16) The entries missing due to the matches eliminated to accommodate the semifinal bye are in bold. You can see there is one on the top and another on the other side making the backet balanced. Brackets were filled out progressing wrestlers, but what I think their seeds were for illustration purposes. These matches never happened.

This is essentially what I did at 65kg. I just kept the pre-seed assignments instead of reassigning them the number where they would be placed in a 16 man bracket. The problem is that the procedures are set up to allow for two semifinal byes. When there is only one then the other becomes a bye making the bracket very unbalanced. If there are two wrestlers with semi-final byes then it works just fine. However two semifinal byes are only possible at three weights and has never happened. They should make a separate procedure for the situation where only one wrestler has a bye. Here is the sample bracket from the procedures. In this case the one world medalist position turns into a bye and makes everything stupid.

I don't understand the bracketing that Flo has for 65KG. Below is their bracket. I think this is dumb. To make the top semifinal a wrestler must be best of 3 wrestlers. This is the case for either quarterfinal that feeds into it. To make the bottom semifinal you must either be Zain Retherford or the top wrestler out of 6 guys. This makes no sense. It makes the bracket unbalanced and the 4 seed more advantageous than the 2 or 3 seeds. It would make more sense to give Retherford his own semi spot and then distribute the 12 wrestlers equally to feed into the other three semi spots. This would make either semifinalist the top wrestler out of 4 instead of two semis being feed by small brackets with 3 wrestlers each and the other semi having 2x as many guys. I would probably do it something like this Here I've made Retherford/the guy with the bye to the semi as the defacto 1 seed distributed the other wrestlers according to their seeds. If there is something in the procedures that favours the actual 1 seed over the guy with a bye to the semifinals I'd switch Retherford with Lee's quarter bracket. This would give the 1 seed Lee the most advantageous semifinal position avoiding both the two seed, Diakomihalis, and the wrestler with the bye, Retherford, until the finals. It would look like this I can't figure out why they do it that way. I thought they would have realized how stupid it was to do it like this the last time after they looked at the 74kg bracket. Totally unbalanced. Nolf had to win only one match to make the finals the same as Dake who had the bye. Meanwhile All the wrestlers on the bottom like the two and three seeds would have to win 3.

Would make sense. NLWC has 4 guys that had spots in 2021.

Yeah is he the youngest D1 head coach? I mostly stuck to the top 15 or so teams. Mike Poeta (Illinois, Illinois 2009) wrestled at the 2012 Olympic Trials. Angel Escobedo (Indiana, Indiana 2010) wrestled at the 2012 Olympic Trials. Chris Pendleton (Oregon State, OSU 2005) was the runner up in the challenge tournament in 2012. Matt Valenti (Penn, Penn 2007) was also at the 2012 Olympic Trials losing to Scott in the semis. I think all retired soon thereafter.

Yeah 1 year after Dieringer who won his last title in 2016.

It is a thing, but no head coach really has that kind of advantage over Smith. In the ranks of D1 head coaches there is scarcely a coach that a 2024 HS graduate would have seen wrestle in competition other than in archival footage. I would feel pretty confidant that if a coach's last competition was 2010 or earlier a 2024 HS grad (maybe 5 at the time) would not have been aware or be able to remember watching them compete live. This eliminates the head coaches at nearly every top program; Michigan, ISU, Iowa, ASU, Virginia Tech, Ohio State, Nebraska, Missouri, NC State, SDSU, UNI, Lehigh, Stanford, WVU, Wisconsin, Rutgers, MN, Northwestern.... The exceptions are few and far between. Cael Sanderson (PSU) came out of retirement in 2011 some recruits may have watched that. Mike Grey graduated from Cornell in 2011 and some may have seen him wrestle at NCAAs that year . He didn't really do much on the freestyle circuit after graduating and went into coach shortly after. Keith Gavin made a world team in 2013 and competed through the 2016 trials. Coleman Scott won bronze in 2012 and tried to make the team again in 2016. I think Kolat unretired and wrestled at the 2012 trials. Are there any other head coaches that competed post 2010? I think if it wasn't something they saw live or were following as it happened then the coach with the bigger accomplishments either coaching or competing has the built in recruiting advantage. Not many can rival John Smith in either department. I don't think a top recruit in the state of OK has gone anywhere else since Jack Spates retired. I was really surprised when Carter Young committed to Northwestern, but then he transferred without ever competing for them.

I would guess this was in reference to the Pan Am qualifier wrestle off with Nick Lee when he did not wrestle match 2 and took injury time in match 1, though I did not see Gilman's comments on the situation. Below is Flo's reporting of the wrestle off. "Diakomihalis slammed his head hard on the mat attempting to finish a double leg in the first period. Throughout the match, Diakomihalis looked visibly shaken up and even looked off balance making his way back to the center of the mat throughout the second period. Because of that head injury, Diakomihalis was forced to medically forfeit out of the second match of the best of 3 series. "

He was 5 in the preseeds USAW announced earlier this week. Did he pull out?

Also missing Hall at 86kg

You forgot Suriano. He is a former PSU wrestler.

Most wins at OSU as a wrestler. Most wins at OSU as a coach. More undefeated teams than Gable. As many conference team titles than Gable. Since Smith took over as head coach in 1991 his teams have won 5 team titles no other coach in that time period has won more except Sanderson.

I think PD3 shows up and wrestles. It not like when he registered at 79kg for the WTT. That was less believable than Starocci getting down to 74kg.

Yeah like Penn State Willie is going to do that?

PD3 was reminding everyone of this fact on social media a couple days ago. Apparently he was concerned that it had been forgotten thanks to hipster liberals who believe in Cancel Culture with help from flowrestling. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5tNVslsNFe/?igsh=MTlyZ2xoeW15d3RnOQ%3D%3D

Retirement Press conference -

AJ Ferrari was Smiths last individual national champion in 2021. Before that it was Dean Heil in 2017. Kids today still know John Smith. He won the Olympics in the 1992 that was 32 years ago. Dan Gable won the Olympics in 1972. College and high school wrestlers still know who was in 2004. And even if they have forgotten it doesn't appear to have negatively affect his ability to recruit. OSU secured 12 top 25 recruits over the past 5 recruiting classes which is the second best behind only PSU (13) and a significant advantage over Ohio State (9), Iowa (8), Michigan (7), and Cornell (6).

I think Starocci could be set up for a debunking here. Moving up after a failed weight cut attempt coming off an injury. PD3 might take him out.