OT: NCAA wrestling championships

[Al DeFlorio]

Time to move beyond Nickerson, etc.

This coming weekend the NCAA wrestling championships are being held in St. Louis.  Eight Cornell wrestlers will be there.  Three are seeded:  Travis Lee, #1 at 133; Dustin Manotti, #6 at 149; and Matt Greenberg, #8 at 197.  

NESN is televising the semifinals on tape-delay, Saturday, March 20, from 4-6pm EST.  ESPN2 is televising the finals, live this year, from 6:30-9pm EST on the 20th.  I believe they still run championship meets in  ascending-weight sequence, so, if Travis gets to the semifinal and championship matches, his matches will be shown early in the broadcasts.

Manotti would likely face #3 Travis Shufelt of Nebraska in the quarterfinals.  Greenberg gets a brutal draw, and would face #1 Damion Hahn of Minnesota should both advance to the quarters.

[ugarte]

[Q]Al DeFlorio Wrote:
 Greenberg gets a brutal draw, and would face #1 Damion Hahn of Minnesota should both advance to the quarters.
 [/Q]Isn't 1 vs 8 standard for the QF? (Or did you mean that getting an 8 seed led to the brutal draw?)

In any event, thanks for the TV tip, Al.  I didn't get to watch Lee's championship match last year until after I knew he had won.

[Al DeFlorio]

[Q]ugarte Wrote:

 Al DeFlorio Wrote:
 Greenberg gets a brutal draw, and would face #1 Damion Hahn of Minnesota should both advance to the quarters.
 Isn't 1 vs 8 standard for the QF? (Or did you mean that getting an 8 seed led to the brutal draw?)
[/Q]
The latter, obviously.  There's no PWR in wrestling.  Seedings are subjective.  I'm not saying Greenberg isn't precisely the 8th-best wrestler in his weight-class in the country, only that by drawing the #8 seed he gets the defending champion at that weight (not all #8s get that opportunity) who has truly dominated the weight-class this season.

You must be working long hours again, because you've become very unpleasant lately.  

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]Al DeFlorio Wrote:
You must be working long hours again, because you've become very unpleasant lately.  
[/Q]

Huh?  If you're referring to the message you just replied to, you must have run it through the cranky bastard filter, since it seemed like a straightforward question to me.  (There are tournaments which are seeded in non-standard ways, like tennis tourneys or the fortunately defunct six-team NCAA baseball regionals.)

[Greg Berge]

Peace, folks.  Objective not-giving-a-fuck-about-wrestling poster detects 0% crankiness in this thread.

[ben03]

make peace not war ...

this one's for jeh25 & Will ::banana:: ::banana:: ::banana:: ::banana::
::banana:: ::banana:: ::banana:: ::banana:: ::banana:: ::banana::


;-) :-P

[Al DeFlorio]

[Q]Greg Berge Wrote:

 Peace, folks.  Objective not-giving-a-fuck-about-wrestling poster detects 0% crankiness in this thread. [/Q]
Upon rereading ugarte's posting, I can only agree with your and John's observations, Greg, and therefore extend apologies to the former apple.  I had read his posting as saying I was whining or complaining about the seeding in some fashion, which was not at all my intention.

Damion Hahn is the defending champion at 197, and has gone through this season with only one loss (about which I can shed no further light).  Other than, perhaps, Travis Lee, Hahn is as difficult an opponent as anyone in the tournament is likely to have, and what I was intending to say is that our guy Greenberg has one tough row to hoe.

At 149, Manotti's weight, the first and second seeds are pretty much standouts (#1 is from Harvard, of all places), but three through five were likely much less clear-cut in the seeding decisions.  Manotti has a better chance of getting through to the televised semifinals, I guess is what I'm saying.  

[ugarte]

Apology accepted, hatchet buried, Al.

Early action:

125: Mike Mormile wins his first match 4-2 over Stanford's Tanner Gardner.  He also catches a break (maybe) as his expected opponent, #3 Matt Valenti (Penn), lost in the first round to Buffalo's Mark McKnight.  (Does anyone in this weight class have a first name that doesn't start with M?)

133: #1 Travis Lee pinned UC-Davis's Derek Moore.

149: #6 Dustin Manotti won his first round match against George Mason's Adrian Austin 7-2.

157: Scott Roth beat Brad Cieleski, Jr. of Slippery Rock 3-1.

165: Joe Mazzurco won his pigtail match against Leighton Brady of (Screw) BU 7-4, but was pinned in his first round match by John Sioredas of UT-Chatanooga.  Good luck in the wrestlebacks, Joe.

174: Tyler Baier skunked Millersville's Curtis Yeager 11-0.  Up next, #4 Ryan Lange from Purdue.

184: Jerry Rinaldi won his opening round match against Oklahoma's Justin Dyer 8-3. (Al, what does the tb in the score mean? If it is tiebreaker, shouldn't it be 4-3?)

197: #8 Matt Greenberg's draw just got far more brutal.  He was pinned at 1:14 by Pitt's Josh Birt.  Good luck in the wrestlebacks, Matt.

[Al DeFlorio]

Yikes.  Just noticed in a posting by nyc94 that Empire is televising Friday night's NCAA wrestling semifinals live from 7pm until 9:30.

If Travis Lee gets there, his match should be on somewhere between 7 and 8.

[RichS]

A day late with this....sorry guys but as you can see, Greenberg and the top two seeds in this weight class are all North Jersey kids...hence this story.

http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2JmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2NTAxNDkx

Good luck to Matt!

[ugarte]

Late session:

125: Mike Mormile lost to Buffalo's Mark McKnight 7-5 and will face UT-Chatanooga's Matt Pitts in the wrestlebacks. Pitts earlier defeated the #8 wrestler in the bracket.

133: #1 Travis Lee scored a technical fall over E. Illinois' Patrick Dowty, 19-4.  He will face #8 Matt Sanchez of Cal-Bakersfield in the QF. Sanchez pinned the #9 wrestler in his second round match.

149: #6 Dustin Manotti advanced over #11 Jeff Ratliff of Ohio St. 5-2. Manotti will face #3 Travis Shufelt of Nebraska in the QF.  Shufelt has cruised through his first two matches.

157: Scott Roth lost to #4 Jake Percival of Ohio U. 6-2.  Percival is one of three undefeated wrestlers at 157.  Roth will face Charlie Brenneman of Lock Haven in the wrestlebacks.

165: Joe Mazzurco defeated Christian Arellano of Cal-Bakersfield 15-6 in his first wrestleback match.  He will next face #11 Tim Foley of Virginia.

174: Tyler Baier lost a close match to #4 Ryan Lange from Purdue 3-2.  He will face Nick Roy of Michigan in the wrestlebacks.

184: Jerry Rinaldi dropped his second round match to #2 Ben Heizer of N. Illinois 8-4.  He will next face #5 Travis Pascoe of Nebraska who was upset in the first round.  (That is a tough draw.)

197: #8 Matt Greenberg's won his first wrestleback match against Venroy July of North Carolina 6-3.  His next match is against West Virginia's Matt Daddino.

All of Cornell's wrestlers are still alive at the end of the first day, which is pretty impressive.  

After Day 1, Cornell is tied with Oklahoma (led by former Cornell head coach Jack Spates) for 9th place.  The Big 10 and Big 12 have 8 of the top 10 spots, the exceptions are Cornell and EIWA colleague (and champion) Lehigh (6th).  

1.   30.0   Oklahoma St
2.   28.0   Illinois
3.   25.0   Nebraska
4.   23.5   Iowa
4.   23.5   Minnesota
6.   23.0   Lehigh
7.   22.5   Iowa St
8.   21.5   Michigan
9.   20.0   Cornell
9.   20.0   Oklahoma

[KenP]

Can you provide some background for the non-wrestlers?  What is the tournament format?  It sounds like double-elimination for early rounds.  Is there a championship-round of single-elimination matches?  How do the "wrestlebacks" work (seeding, consequences of winning or losing, etc.)?

EDIT: Also, how are team scores determined?  And how high is Cornell ranked (what team score would be over or underachieving)?

[Al DeFlorio]

Each weight has 12 seeded wrestlers.  The other qualifiers are essentially assigned slots in the brackets by draw.  Winners proceed through the brackets until there's a winner, a la the NCAA roundball tournament.  The loser in the championship match finishes second.

When a wrestler loses his first match, he is put in the wrestleback, or consolation bracket.  I can't tell you how these are slotted, other than the further you get in the "winner's bracket," the further along you are slotted in the wrestleback bracket.  That is, two wrestlers who lost in the first round of the winner's bracket would wrestle in the first round of the wrestlebacks, and the winner of that match would face a wrestler who made it through the first round of the winner's bracket but lost in the second round.  Wrestleback matches determine places three through eight in each weight class, and the top eight finishers all gain All-America status.  So the last two wrestlers standing in the wrestleback bracket would wrestle for third and fourth place.

Can't tell you the specifics of scoring.  Wrestlers earn points for their team depending on where they finish overall in their weight.  At the EIWAs you earn bonus points for a major decision, technical fall, or fall, which also contribute to your team's score, and I'm sure this is also true in the NCAAs.  (This last is why Cornell wrestled at a disadvantage in the EIWAs.  The luck of the draw assigned Cornell six first-round byes, denying Cornell wrestlers the chance to pick up bonus points by pinning or major-decisioning unseeded wrestlers in these first-round matches.  The other side of that coin, I suppose, is that you can't lose a match in which you have a bye.)

[ugarte]

[Q]Al DeFlorio Wrote:
When a wrestler loses his first match, he is put in the wrestleback, or consolation bracket.  I can't tell you how these are slotted, other than the further you get in the "winner's bracket," the further along you are slotted in the wrestleback bracket.  That is, two wrestlers who lost in the first round of the winner's bracket would wrestle in the first round of the wrestlebacks, and the winner of that match would face a wrestler who made it through the first round of the winner's bracket but lost in the second round.  [/Q]I think, based on a quick review of the brackets, that the semi-random slotting of the main draw also determines the wrestleback draw for the first consy round.  (E.g., the person who lost to the top-ranked wrestler will face the person who lost to #1's second round opponent in the wrestleback round at the "top" of the consolation bracket.)

I can't tell how losers in subsequent rounds are slotted, though in brackets from prior years they appeared to be predetermined (i.e., each match is given a match number, and the wrestleback slots are assigned to the loser of particular matches, regardless of the seeding of the wrestler).

As for team results, in the 2/25 W.I.N. rankings (the most recent published rankings I could find), Cornell was #15.

I'll continue to post results at the end of each round, but the full brackets can be found at http://www.ncaasports.com/wrestling/mens/brackets/125/2004 .

EDIT: Age, can you fix this link?  (Do you even read wrestling posts?)

EDIT: Apparently so. Thanks for the fix.

[CowbellGuy]

Apparently the period attached to the end of the URL was confusing it. ::rolleyes:: Shoddy...