Wrote some NC State wrestling and ACC Championships breakdown late last night with the regular season complete. I re-read this morning and it all still seemed to make sense, so I figured I'd post here.
One note before diving into this, NC State did finish No. 3 in the final national coaches' poll, which is what I expected to happen. Despite being one of just two undefeated teams nationally, they were 11 points behind 12-2 Penn State, which I believe is a wider gap than last week, but it is what it is. Tournament placements in the postseason is really what matters.
That is the team's second-best final regular-season national placement ever, behind No. 2 in 2016, and they have finished in the top 10 of the listing each of the last five seasons (2nd, 7th, 6th, 10th and 3rd). NCSU has now been ranked in the top 10 of the national poll each of the last 73 weeks, which dates back five seasons. NC State will also enter next year with the nation's longest dual winning streak (17). All those notes come from this GoPack release: https://gopack.com/news/2020/2/25/w...kbyqDOz6jvWuKYnty-F3TOgBLS1Gs9WsPBVQb5F6LHpvw
Anyway, here's a somewhat mathematical look at how the league stacks up as of now. Seeds for ACCs won't be out until next week, and there are a lot of interesting weights to see how it shakes out. Seeds are done strictly by a coaches' vote, though I think they normally follow individual results from ACC duals pretty closely…
I put the ACC results from this year in the patented Tice Predictor 9000, which is really just a bunch of scrap pieces of paper.
For this exercise, I really took most any thought out of it from me and went with just the results from this year’s ACC duals. Where there were ties, I went with head to head results. Where there was the classic ‘A beats B, B beats C, C beats A’ situation or ties without a head to head, I left them tied and give a predicted maximum and minimum depending upon how big the tier is. Hopefully, it will all make sense later.
Anyway, here were my base scores, then I’ll get into the toss-up spots that will most likely decide the tournament (keep in mind, the brackets won’t all play out as predicted, and these team scores won’t be accurate because they don’t account for any bonus points):
1. NC State 59 (6 wrestlers with “known placement”/4 tossups)
2. Pitt 50 (6/4)
3. UNC 42 (6/4)
4. Virginia 33 (9/1)
5. Virginia Tech 30 (6/4)
6. Duke 3 (7/2 … they forfeit 125)
These looks really cruel to Virginia Tech, but as I noted with the numbers in parenthesis Virginia passes them by having nine out of 10 guys in their lineup “locked in” to a point slot, so to speak. The Hokies are at just six with three who could still place as high as first and another as high as second … but their raw minimum score is still quite a bit lower than other perceived contenders.
Before we get in to maximum point totals, here were the weight classes and placement spots that I deemed up for grabs (and tiers, when applicable):
141 — First through third places are completely up for grabs between NC State’s Tariq Wilson, Virginia Tech’s Mitch Moore and UNC’s Zach Sherman. Moore beat Wilson, Wilson beat Sherman, Sherman beat Moore.
157 — The only sure things are NC State’s Hayden Hidlay in first and Duke’s Eric Carter in sixth. Second through fifth is totally up in the air between the remaining four schools.
165 — The biggest spread of them all with a completely bonkers situation. Two wrestlers (UNC’s Kennedy Monday and NC State’s Daniel Bullard) were undefeated in ACC duals. A third, Duke’s Ben Anderson, went 3-1. Then there is three-time All-American David McFadden of Virginia Tech, who was beaten by Monday and Bullard, but has the best resume of all. Pitt’s Jake Wentzel shouldn’t be overlooked, though he went 1-3 in ACC duals, he was ranked high nationally all year (around the top 10ish) and had some big wins early in the year — though he seems to have tailed off since Jan. 1.
174 — This is the only weight class where I established tiers and separated wrestlers in these mentioned spots. I separated Pitt’s Gregg Harvey (4-0 in ACC duals) and NC State’s Daniel Bullard (3-1, with the loss to Harvey) as 1-2, and Duke’s Mason Eaglin and UNC’s Clay Lautt as 3-4.
184 — Another A beats B, B beats C, C beats A, except this time these guys are all in the top 10 nationally and completely viable NCAA title contenders with Arizona State’s two-time national champion Zahid Valencia indefinitely suspended as of last week. VT’s Hunter Bolen was ranked No. 2 nationally heading into last weekend, expected to move up to No. 1 this week given Valencia’s suspension, with NC State’s Trent Hidlay likely to go from No. 3 to No. 2 and Pitt’s Nino Bonaccorsi No. 7 to 6.
Everything got flipped when Bonaccorsi upset Bolen, who beat Hidlay, who beat Bonaccorsi. This one is truly too close to call.
Now that I’ve explained the tossups here is each team with its max points, how many it would score if all their guys mentioned in those five spots above did as well as possible (obviously, each team can’t score its max):
1. NC State 88 (59 base/29 variance)
2. Pitt 81 (50 base/31 variance)
3. UNC 72 (42 base/30 variance)
4. VT 65 (30 base/35 variance)
5. UVA 42 (33 base/9 variance)
6. Duke 17 (3 base/14 variance)
I’m really surprised to see Virginia Tech still down low, in fourth place. I'm guessing they have not finished that low within the ACC in a long time, but their best guys are all in toss-up weight classes. Their only “sure things” based on the way I did this projection were Bryce Andonian finishing second at 149 (and that’s not even a sure thing) and John Borst third at heavyweight (again, far from definite).
The Hokies also have a lot of room for improvement from my minimums. 125 Joey Prata could move up a few slots from where he is slotted for this exercise (4th), same with 133 Colin Gerardi (5th). The way the records fell, they were just the team that got “penalized” the most by the regular-season results, and of course David McFadden went from being thought of as a surefire ACC champ and All-American to maybe not so anymore.
From an NC State perspective, this model obviously favors them quite a bit with the only team that has a chance of catching them if they’re at their best being Pitt. I feel they also have some upward mobility coming from 133 Jarrett Trombley and 149 AJ Leitten, who both checked in third in this exercise but I could see either getting second (going from third to second is an additional four advancement/placement points). Trombley lost to No. 2 Jamie Hernandez of UNC 1-0 in the dual, while I’m probably going out on a limb saying that Leitten can hang with VT’s Bryce Andonian, who pinned him in the first period in the dual.
For what it’s worth, Flo’s rankings put into a tournament rubric results in this for the team standings, though they haven’t been updated since Feb. 11:
1. NC State 75
2. Pitt 62
3. VT 59.5
4. UNC 58
5. VA 47.5
6. Duke 8
One note before diving into this, NC State did finish No. 3 in the final national coaches' poll, which is what I expected to happen. Despite being one of just two undefeated teams nationally, they were 11 points behind 12-2 Penn State, which I believe is a wider gap than last week, but it is what it is. Tournament placements in the postseason is really what matters.
That is the team's second-best final regular-season national placement ever, behind No. 2 in 2016, and they have finished in the top 10 of the listing each of the last five seasons (2nd, 7th, 6th, 10th and 3rd). NCSU has now been ranked in the top 10 of the national poll each of the last 73 weeks, which dates back five seasons. NC State will also enter next year with the nation's longest dual winning streak (17). All those notes come from this GoPack release: https://gopack.com/news/2020/2/25/w...kbyqDOz6jvWuKYnty-F3TOgBLS1Gs9WsPBVQb5F6LHpvw
Anyway, here's a somewhat mathematical look at how the league stacks up as of now. Seeds for ACCs won't be out until next week, and there are a lot of interesting weights to see how it shakes out. Seeds are done strictly by a coaches' vote, though I think they normally follow individual results from ACC duals pretty closely…
I put the ACC results from this year in the patented Tice Predictor 9000, which is really just a bunch of scrap pieces of paper.
For this exercise, I really took most any thought out of it from me and went with just the results from this year’s ACC duals. Where there were ties, I went with head to head results. Where there was the classic ‘A beats B, B beats C, C beats A’ situation or ties without a head to head, I left them tied and give a predicted maximum and minimum depending upon how big the tier is. Hopefully, it will all make sense later.
Anyway, here were my base scores, then I’ll get into the toss-up spots that will most likely decide the tournament (keep in mind, the brackets won’t all play out as predicted, and these team scores won’t be accurate because they don’t account for any bonus points):
1. NC State 59 (6 wrestlers with “known placement”/4 tossups)
2. Pitt 50 (6/4)
3. UNC 42 (6/4)
4. Virginia 33 (9/1)
5. Virginia Tech 30 (6/4)
6. Duke 3 (7/2 … they forfeit 125)
These looks really cruel to Virginia Tech, but as I noted with the numbers in parenthesis Virginia passes them by having nine out of 10 guys in their lineup “locked in” to a point slot, so to speak. The Hokies are at just six with three who could still place as high as first and another as high as second … but their raw minimum score is still quite a bit lower than other perceived contenders.
Before we get in to maximum point totals, here were the weight classes and placement spots that I deemed up for grabs (and tiers, when applicable):
141 — First through third places are completely up for grabs between NC State’s Tariq Wilson, Virginia Tech’s Mitch Moore and UNC’s Zach Sherman. Moore beat Wilson, Wilson beat Sherman, Sherman beat Moore.
157 — The only sure things are NC State’s Hayden Hidlay in first and Duke’s Eric Carter in sixth. Second through fifth is totally up in the air between the remaining four schools.
165 — The biggest spread of them all with a completely bonkers situation. Two wrestlers (UNC’s Kennedy Monday and NC State’s Daniel Bullard) were undefeated in ACC duals. A third, Duke’s Ben Anderson, went 3-1. Then there is three-time All-American David McFadden of Virginia Tech, who was beaten by Monday and Bullard, but has the best resume of all. Pitt’s Jake Wentzel shouldn’t be overlooked, though he went 1-3 in ACC duals, he was ranked high nationally all year (around the top 10ish) and had some big wins early in the year — though he seems to have tailed off since Jan. 1.
174 — This is the only weight class where I established tiers and separated wrestlers in these mentioned spots. I separated Pitt’s Gregg Harvey (4-0 in ACC duals) and NC State’s Daniel Bullard (3-1, with the loss to Harvey) as 1-2, and Duke’s Mason Eaglin and UNC’s Clay Lautt as 3-4.
184 — Another A beats B, B beats C, C beats A, except this time these guys are all in the top 10 nationally and completely viable NCAA title contenders with Arizona State’s two-time national champion Zahid Valencia indefinitely suspended as of last week. VT’s Hunter Bolen was ranked No. 2 nationally heading into last weekend, expected to move up to No. 1 this week given Valencia’s suspension, with NC State’s Trent Hidlay likely to go from No. 3 to No. 2 and Pitt’s Nino Bonaccorsi No. 7 to 6.
Everything got flipped when Bonaccorsi upset Bolen, who beat Hidlay, who beat Bonaccorsi. This one is truly too close to call.
Now that I’ve explained the tossups here is each team with its max points, how many it would score if all their guys mentioned in those five spots above did as well as possible (obviously, each team can’t score its max):
1. NC State 88 (59 base/29 variance)
2. Pitt 81 (50 base/31 variance)
3. UNC 72 (42 base/30 variance)
4. VT 65 (30 base/35 variance)
5. UVA 42 (33 base/9 variance)
6. Duke 17 (3 base/14 variance)
I’m really surprised to see Virginia Tech still down low, in fourth place. I'm guessing they have not finished that low within the ACC in a long time, but their best guys are all in toss-up weight classes. Their only “sure things” based on the way I did this projection were Bryce Andonian finishing second at 149 (and that’s not even a sure thing) and John Borst third at heavyweight (again, far from definite).
The Hokies also have a lot of room for improvement from my minimums. 125 Joey Prata could move up a few slots from where he is slotted for this exercise (4th), same with 133 Colin Gerardi (5th). The way the records fell, they were just the team that got “penalized” the most by the regular-season results, and of course David McFadden went from being thought of as a surefire ACC champ and All-American to maybe not so anymore.
From an NC State perspective, this model obviously favors them quite a bit with the only team that has a chance of catching them if they’re at their best being Pitt. I feel they also have some upward mobility coming from 133 Jarrett Trombley and 149 AJ Leitten, who both checked in third in this exercise but I could see either getting second (going from third to second is an additional four advancement/placement points). Trombley lost to No. 2 Jamie Hernandez of UNC 1-0 in the dual, while I’m probably going out on a limb saying that Leitten can hang with VT’s Bryce Andonian, who pinned him in the first period in the dual.
For what it’s worth, Flo’s rankings put into a tournament rubric results in this for the team standings, though they haven’t been updated since Feb. 11:
1. NC State 75
2. Pitt 62
3. VT 59.5
4. UNC 58
5. VA 47.5
6. Duke 8
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