Michigan went out and completely remade their lineup with transfers. The reason was obvious--they had a weak squad due to some recruiting misses and lack of development.
Griffith, Davison and Gomez all had excellent tournies. So did Ragusin but he was the only "homegrown" wrestler to do so. Former AA and transfer Deaugustino had a pedestrian NCAA's. Two Time AA's Amine and Lewan failed to place. True frosh Lemley, who'd climbed the rankings after embarrassing Woods, also dnp'd.
On paper, UM was arguably the second best team in the country. They finished 3rd with a team of hired guns.
Same can be said of Iowa. Four placers....5th place...three placers were transfers.
Also Worth noting--PSU transfers Nagao and Truax were not better wrestlers in State College than their previous schools. In fact, Nagao was flat out better at Minny.
Any thoughts?
The thing about PSU is that everyone always thinks that "so and so's are graduating" so they'll be weaker. But then they reload and it's the same talk all over again.
Bucks have a terrific young squad but they're not close to knocking off PSU anytime soon.
These programs typically have plenty of smart graduates who earn a lot of money. Technically, you're correct but one would expect that wealthy Ivy wrestling alums could figure out how to put together some NIL in a way that's within the rules.
I'd love to see a list of each school with an AA plus the wrestler's name, wt and placement. Does one exist? (Yes I could do it myself...yes I'm too lazy)
Sorry to hijack this thread but I've gotta talk about Rogotzke. I thought he'd be a bust in college. I was wrong. He is a pinner from the word go. He embraces techniques and strategies that most wrestlers are taught to shy away from. He incorporates them into common wrestling situations and often uses one "big" move to set up another. We call him "unorthodox" because he's unconventional but technique works when you practice it enough to be comfortable with it in a variety of situations. In my opinion, he's a year away from being a very serious title contender and possibly on multiple occasions. Think Wade Schalles or Ben Askren.
What a magnificent job Tom Borelli did. My jaw used to drop watching some of his guys compete during the heyday of his program. You'd see his guys taking on big name recruits from prominent programs and beating them with regularity. At some point, it got more difficult for CMU to continue to push towards the top ten but they have always remained competitive. In my opinion, Borelli is one of the best D1 wrestling programs in the history of our sport.
In the BT, you've got:
Tier 1: PSU
Tier 2: Iowa, tOSU, UM, Nebraska
Tier 3: Minny, Wiscy, Rutgers
Tier 4: MSU, Illinois, Purdue
Tier 5: Indiana, NW, Maryland
Just how I see it. And schools like Minny and Wiscy hate not being in Tier 2.
Kennedy looked excellent beating a very tough Ruth. Griffith might well have lost to Welsh had the tOSU coaches picked neutral instead of bottom in the third period. But, as we all know, the transitive property in wrestling is often a suckers way to decide outcomes.