Scores were up, but were they? Looking at the impact of the college scoring changes - Mat Stats 31

Episode 31 of the Mat Stats Show deals with how team scoring changed with the new 3-point TD and 2,3, & 4 point near fall, how accurate is the seeding process, and a recap of the 2023-24 season. Join hosts Glenn Gormley, Kevin Hazard and Jason Bryant as we dive into those numbers.

Slideshow to accompany this episode is here: https://www.mattalkonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/slideshow31.pdf

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About Mat Stats
Welcome to the NWCA’s latest venture to help our favorite sport. Glenn Gormley, Jason Bryant and Kevin Hazard outline their effort to bring statistical analysis to wrestling. Mat Stats is the NWCA’s attempt to bring wrestling up to speed with so many other sports by incorporating stats. It is the same sport, the wrestlers are just older and better. 

Mat Stats by the NWCA is a monthly podcast by the National Wrestling Coaches Association
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Episode Transcript

(00:03):
Statistics. They can mean many things. It can be a batting average,
a win percentage, correlations, andstandard deviation. But numbers aren't just for
nerds. In life, decisions needdata. In wrestling decisions, projections and
hypotheticals also need data. Here onMatt Stats, we take historical data,

(00:28):
theories, and statistics and apply itto the world's oldest and greatest sport.
Now to your trio of numerical nerdballs, Glenn Gormley, Kevin Hazard,
and Jason Bryant, and welcome backto The Mad Stats Show, Episode thirty
one, along with the Grand Poobaof Wrestling, the soon to be retired

(00:48):
Kevin Hazard, and our resident statistician, the Doctor of I don't know whatever.
How do we come up with agood title for you? We got
Pooba, that sounds pretty cool.What about you, Glenn, the the
what what do you call? TheWizard? Sultan of sat I like it,
Sultan of Stats. I'm gonna haveto google that real quick to make

(01:08):
sure that's not taken by somebody,because people call me the Podfather. No,
no, no, Adam Curry's gotthat. Let's see because and it's
funny because you have a guy youall have a friend from your women Mary
group, who's Boog Powell. Notthat Boog Powell. But it's another baseball
referen Sultan Stat. Let's see whomight own that. Well, the Sultans

(01:29):
of Stats is a four division fantasyBaseball super league. Uh it's yeah,
it's like it's apparently it's a fantasybaseball super league. Weird. Interesting,
So yeah, I think it's Ithink it's safe to use in the wrestling
community. So the the Grand Poobaover here, the Sultan of Stat over
here, and I am a ratherparched and worn down Jason Bryant here on

(01:53):
The Man's Stad Show, where welook at things beyond just the actual score
in the sport of wrestling, themoneyball of wrestling, a couple of different
tagles we want to use today.We're talking about statistics in regards to the
Insate Wrestling Championships because we and andof course Division one wrestling as a whole,
as we had this scoring rule changes. But before we get into that,
coming off a weekend in which wesaw the United States Olympic team for

(02:15):
twenty twenty four, the Olympic TeamTrials champions crowned. Still got a couple
weights to qualify three in Greco twoand men's freestyle. We'll do that in
about two three weeks in Istanbul,Turkey a which is how it's pronounced now.
But first of all, I guessget some general impressions. What you
guys thought about the trials. Let'sstart with you, Glenn. I thought

(02:36):
it was great. I mean,it's just fantastic. I know it's difficult
for a lot of people to seethe passing the torch, you know,
notably in the Brooks and Tailor match, but it's just part of life.
I mean it's great. I thinkwe're in good shape and I'm real happy
to see it and be, youknow, to witness it. Kevin,
what about you? I was thinkingthe same thing about the passing a torch

(03:00):
and also the how well some ofthe high schoolers did. I know,
they didn't get to the finals,but Jacks Forrest going five to four with
Gilman in the first round. Imean, that's that's pretty amazing. Sophomore
in high school and he's running witha world titled or a world place winner.

(03:21):
Yes, I mean I think theybecause I also, you know,
was at the tournament the week beforeand there were so many really good high
school. They didn't they didn't wrestlelike high school kids. They were right
there at the world level. Ithought that was really impressive. Yeah,
and let's look at some numbers.We talked about passing of the torch.

(03:42):
We can. Let me just sortthis appropriately because in our in our Greco
team, with the three weights thatare qualified, that's that's a little bit
of it longer in the tooth because, uh, you know, a twenty
one year old Peyton Jacobson, whois probably the least credentialed when we talk
about statistics coming from high school theonly place in high scho one time besides
then decided to concentrate on Greco istwenty one at Northern Michigan. Then you

(04:06):
got thirty three year old Joe Rowwon the trials back in sixteen, didn't
qualify the weight class, and thenhad some controversy surrounding his finals loss last
time down to Fort Worth, andthat kind of got ugly in some of
the things that were said when tryingto fight through that. Then he makes
the team. The weight is qualified, so Joe's there, and then twenty

(04:26):
nine year old Adam Kohn, whogets back on the team kind of broke
his five match losing streak format.He had a significant losing streak against Colton
Schultz since he had come back fromtrying to go for the NFL. He's
twenty nine. Now, the men'sfreestyle team thirty three year old Kyle Dake.
Aaron Brooks is twenty three. KyleSnyder makes his third Olympic team.
He's twenty eight, and then you'vegot Mason Parris who's twenty four. Then

(04:51):
you've got the women's free style team. Hildebrand's thirty on her second team.
Marulos makes her third team at thirtytwo. Kennedy Blades in a min alare
are twenty. They're both twenty yearsold, and Kayla Miracle on her second
Olympic team, is twenty seven.Dom Parish is also twenty seven. So
the average age is about twenty sixand a half here. So we've still

(05:12):
got a couple of weights. Thoseare just the ones that are qualified.
I didn't go through the weights thathaven't been qualified yet, but we know
that I'm just talking about you know, of course, Spencer Lee. We
can you know, other shows talkheavy on that because it's fresh on our
mind, but that's it's just youknow, aging nothing but a number,
right, right, Glenn, youtalk about the agentes, we talk about
numbers. We uh, yep,we can go forward that anyway. So
that's just a quick look at someof the ages of our teams, passing

(05:34):
the torch, the young and thenew and again. I was talking with
my wife last night. She's like, you know, she's been watching you
know, enough wrestling since since wegot married fourteen years ago, and it's
like, you know, paying,She's like, she's like that Kennedy blade.
I mean, so, you know, taking out Adeline two straight matches,
you know, passing of the torchthere as well. You know,

(05:55):
Adeline's been such a great representation ofwomen's wrestling in general and what it means
to come up and grow up wrestlingthe boys. And so i'd same with
Helen. So they've they've both beenicons in this generation of women's wrestlers coming
through. So that's that's Uh,it's one of the things we we we
you know, you shed tears whenwhen career you know, some yeah,
we don't know if their careers areover. Headline's careers over not yet,

(06:17):
but Jayden Cox's is definitely over.He left issues on the Matt Mark Hall,
Uh did it off to the side. I didn't see it. So
that's why he didn't get a popis I had no idea what was going
on, couldn't see it. Nobodywas communicating with me what was going on.
So uh, Mark didn't do hisin the center of the Matt did
it in the consolation, kind ofoff to the side. Put him in
the corner. Maybe that's indicative ofI didn't watch his interview following because I'm

(06:39):
obviously a little busy. But uh, you know, Jaden Cox was a
crowd give him his due, youknow, Olympic medalist, multip time world
champion, so uh, you know, high emotions at the Olympics, not
just the passing of the torch,but also the the ends of careers,
and that's sometimes a hard thing touh to you know, to kind of
graph Sometimes. I was really impressedwhen you have to be impressed with a

(07:03):
meet the lord. She's she's gotwhat eight world titles now something like that
for two years she was seventeen,twenty and twenty three. Yeah, there
was also they won the seniors twentythree and twenty. Yeah, she won
all three of them one year,two years in a row. Actually,
Now what's interesting is Dave Matthews,who is the the not the band singer

(07:26):
who went to UVA, the techguy, the it guy at USA Wrestling,
had helped to develop the pin scenario, the pin rankings, the performance
index, and he's got a databaseof all these results. We looked at
the last time lost to an Americanwas like, I think twenty fifteen at
like the Novice Western Regionals, Likeyeah, yeah, it was what yeah,

(07:51):
so she was eleven at the time, something like that. And the
last time David Taylor lost to anAmerican that wasn't an injury default was was
Jay cox a what the seventeen WorldTeam Trials. So that's that's a pretty
good run there too. So anyway, Glenn, what do we got today
here on the show? Okay,today's shows called the Sunshine Boards of Daylights
out of Me and uh that's ofcourse from the famous Falling Stone song.

(08:15):
And uh, I selected that becauseof the solar eclipse we had here recently.
Some parts of America had one hundredpercent, some parts are less,
some parts had none. But anyway, this episode deals with how team scoring
changed with a new three point takedowntwo three and four point per faur,
how accurate the seeding is and basicallya recap of the twenty three twenty four

(08:37):
seasons. Okay, as you guysknow, I feel like a number,
you know the Bob Seeker song eightsix seven, five three oh nine.
I'm not gonna spend last is they'renot a sponsor. Danny's Glass will always
get the plug for that back inVirginia because that's their phone number too,
Yes, exactly. Okay, Sothe opinion spress on this show do not

(09:01):
necessarily reflect any opinions of the NWCARoyalty, and not necessarily do Gormley Bryant
Howzard degree on everything. Okay,Mad Status is a numbers show. It's
based on numbers and facts, notbased on opinions. I know most shows
are based on opinions. Okay,then we get down here too. There's
now five hundred and five men andwomen's teams. Guys, Okay, we're

(09:24):
gonna update that every month. That'sgreat, that that's happening. We want
to keep on seeing the numbers growhigher and higher up to five or five
and of course we've got to updatethis, like you said, each time.
Glenn on Adega Community college up inNew York. I think I'm saying
that right adding men's and women's today. So I think you didn't have a
chance to update this update the sheetin time. But hey, there's another

(09:46):
junior college up in the Northeast that'sadding men's and women's wrestling. Yep,
that's great to hear. Okay,And Matt Stats wants to say good byde
the Notre Dame college. They closedfor business and not of course took away
some of our wrestling teams. It'sa shame. I always enjoyed referring to
the Notre Dame in Indiana as theother Notre Dame because they're the one that

(10:09):
didn't have the wrestling team. Otherpeople think that the Notre Dame in Indiana
is the real school. I don'tknow why if you don't have a wrestling
team. Okay, so Glenn,what are we going to go through today?
Can we just get a kind ofa synopsis of what we're going to
do? Sure, we are goingto dive into the takedowns and how many

(10:31):
points do we're scored to figure outwhat's exactly going on on this because takedown
to the increase from two to threepoints that's fifty percent. Okay. Can
you imagine if a touchdown went fromsix to nine, the scoring would most
likely be up. Then we're goingto go over the seating and to recap
of the season. Now, theslide that Jason has up there now thirty

(10:52):
one to ten is the years areon the left, and then the average
points BRENTSEAA tournament and major rules thatchanged that might affect the scoring, and
of course this year recently is theincreased takedown scoring. Okay. Now,
thankfully Jason Briant has put this together. Here, this slide has all the

(11:15):
dual, all the matches, notjust doing me, it's any match that
that NCAA Division ie guy. Fromthe twenty two to twenty three season to
the twenty three to twenty four season. What we see there, his regular
decisions were down twenty two percent,majors were up sixteen, and texts were
up one hundred and forty five.Okay, guys, so there's something there,

(11:37):
Okay, something out in there.Forty percent difference. Glad that seems
a little statistically significant. Oh yeah, that's more than statistically significant. That
wakes you up, man. Sothe NCAA tournament, Okay, compared to
the five previous ones nineteen to twentytwo. This shows you how many more

(12:03):
team points were scored. Now,something I want to let everybody know here.
The placement does not change, nomatter how much you count of take
down. First place is sixteen,second places twelve, It does not matter.
Okay. The advancements, the onlyreason they change is because Sally won
of the cornell of Usser's had tonot way in due to injury. So

(12:26):
we had technically one championship in oneconcert less match. So that's a point
and a half from advancement less.Okay. The bonus is where it changes
for the bonus points for majors ortechnicals. Okay, that is up almost
fifteen and a half percent. Okay. So that's where the rubber meets the

(12:48):
road on this the total match points. Okay. Now, if anybody recalls,
we did shows in the past,and we did the ninety eight to
ninety two and the seventeen through twelve. Okay, each of those had five
tournaments, because sadly there was notournament in twenty twenty. Okay, So

(13:09):
we compare the most recent go batchwe had seventeen to twenty two to twenty
twenty four. This is if someof you guys might find there staggering.
The total points in a match differentwhen I ask people to guess they're all
guests gonna be three or four pointsmore. It was only two thirds of

(13:30):
a point more. Oh, pointssixty eight. Okay, Now that is
an increase, guys, It's aslight increase. The pins went down twenty
two percent. This is just NCAAtournament Division one mans. The ots were
up twelve percent. The defaults,thankfully, were down forty six percent.

(13:52):
Thankfully, that's something good up inthere. Okay. The margin of victory
was up fifteen percent. Okay,once again, the decision was down just
very slightly. The major in Nationalswas hardy down was it was basically the
same, whereas in all the matchesit was up significantly. The technical falls

(14:15):
are up one hundred and twenty percent, so that is a big difference.
Now, how is the scoring onlyup two thirds of a point? Okay,
Gorms. So we've had all thesechanges. Can you kind of go
through the math on how how yougot to those numbers? Yeah, sure,

(14:37):
Kevin. What I did was Iwent back we had this twenty seventeen
to twenty two and I just youknow, copied those and then did every
single bout that was at Nationals.Okay, and the slide that Jason is
up there. Now, this show'sround by round okay, CHS Championship COS
consolation in case anybody's wondering, andthat's shows it. Okay. Now,

(15:03):
one thing we have to consider hereis we found out in just a few
minutes ago that the points per matchonly went up zero points sixty eight points.
Okay. That is a very smallincrease considering the fifty percent increase of
takedown and some increases in in thenear fall thing. Okay. Now,

(15:26):
when we wrote the Machas booked thatwas released in October twenty twenty, we
looked at the quarters the semis inthe finals of all weights from twenty seventeen
through twenty nineteen. We learned thatfour point sixty one takedown points per match
were scored. In other words,two point three takedowns per match. Okay.

(15:48):
Fifty percent of all points were fromtakedowns. There were five point four
scoring moves per bat. Okay.So when we take this all together,
Okay, what we we can dohere, guys, is we can have
what we call some statistical assumptions.Okay, and this is basically you know
when a guy like a statistical guy, keeps everything the same and doesn't have

(16:11):
any bias and not massaging the numbers, we try to figure out why we're
only at point six' eight increase. Okay. Now what we learn from
this is you can see on thenext slide, if we ald constant the
number of takedowns per match two pointthree one. Okay. If that held

(16:32):
constant in twenty twenty four, wewould have seen a little over thirteen points
a match and not eleven and ahalf. Okay. So something tells me
here there might not have been asmany takedowns or some other scoring might have
changed. Okay. Now, ifwe do some reverse engineering that Willie Boyce

(16:53):
seeger a love because he always hearsthat. What we do with that,
and I don't want to get everyonetoo, could fuse it all with the
points. But we know the textureup one hundred and twenty percent or two
point two multiplier. Okay. Whatwe can see here is there's something going
on where there's less scoring moves permatch. We got less scoring moves per

(17:18):
match, and we've got we've gota new three point takedown and they absolutely
added an extra point into the tothe to the falls or the near falls.
Can you sum up what that allmeans? Yeah, I sure will.
Kevin. First of all, Iwant to thank doctor j doctor Jackie

(17:41):
Piquette. She's going to try toget statistic to NCAA to keep statistical number
of takedowns, escapes and stuff likethat, because you know, I had
time to watch a lot of thesematches in the past. Don't have time
to watch every single NCUBA match.Okay. What this means is we have
to do a deeper dive into this, okay. And it's someone can be

(18:04):
said it's the law of undertended consequences. For some reason, there's less scoring
in this. I don't see thedefense changing that drastically from twenty three to
twenty four. Okay, So isthis really what we wanted? Okay?
Now, the good thing is Okay, Kevin, tell us what you're gonna

(18:26):
do to help the sport of wrestling. Okay. I retired last Friday,
like it says on the screen,and I'd like to take the task of
going through the last couple of nationalsand just do a complete outline on all
the all the scoring, you know, on takedowns and near falls and see

(18:48):
what happens. And the one thingI am going to look at because something
we haven't talked about. They changedthe rules and made you know, you
can get a three point takedown,but they also made it harder to get
a takedown out because they changed itfrom hands hand touched and it was a
two to now you're going to haveto have full reaction time. And I

(19:10):
want to see if that makes thedifference, because yeah, yeah, that's
what I'm saying. So it's harderto get a takedown. You get more
points, but it's harder to getit. Well, Kevin, when you
when you produce these numbers for meto analyze, it's going to help a
lot. And I think it's reallygoing to be pieces of information that the

(19:32):
fans of the sport, the coachesand ustlers, everyone needs to see.
So it's really and we will dofans. We will do a complete show
on this once Kevin's done that.This was something I know it bothered a
lot of people. We're talking aboutseating and we have Carter Staraci, but
we also had a Rujia, bothof them returning national champs Carter, a

(19:56):
three time national champ. How withthem being a nine and a six seed,
how accurate is our current seating system? Okay, Kevin, thank you
for that question. What I didhere, and if you've seen this you
can look at it. This isa seed of every thirty three seeds and

(20:17):
all ten weight classes and where theyplaced. Okay. Now, in order
to do correlations you need numerical values. Okay. So you might say,
well, this guy didn't place,he lost in the blood round, or
he lost right away. What wedo here, guys, as you can

(20:37):
see on slide twenty eight, ifyou're losing the rattail consolations, you place
thirty third. If you're losing thefirst round, the consolations you place twenty
eight and a half. If you'relosing the second round the consolations you place
twenty and a half. If you'relosing the third round, the consolation you've
lose fourteen and a half. Ifyou're losing the blood round, you place

(20:59):
ten and a half. Okay.Now, the reason for this is because
four guys losing the blood round,which will be ninth through twelve. Nine
plus twelve is twenty one divided bytwo is ten and a half because in
order to do correlations, you haveto do that. Okay. Now,
on this slide that Jason has upthere, now you could see the average

(21:21):
rank okay, for the polls thatJason has on his eyes to show the
guide and compared to the seed.Okay, for example, down there we
see that star Rucci was average rankone point two, but he was seen
at ninth. Because the rules arethe rules. Okay, Yeah, and

(21:41):
let's touch on that real quick becausewhat we and you touched on that a
little bit and we'll get to ithere about the defaults. The number of
medical forfeits and defaults was down significantlyacross the entire season, So all those
thousands of matches, the percent weredown, and especially in the postseason where

(22:02):
you're taking the loss. All right, I'm defaulting out that. Now that
instituted the rule that any loss,uh, it's gonna cost you, you're
gonna be a it's a default offorfeit. Now there's also that the added
rule where you have to wrestle twiceat your conference qualifiers. So Starachi took
the two to one second injury defaultsthat took him in the lost out.

(22:23):
Because math, you've got a systemput in place, and now so that's
the question. You know, thehuman element is that, but then there's
also the math element. We've gainedthe system. The system has been gained
so much that we have the rulesthe way we have them because everybody's trying
to game the rules, and youknow, so it's basically this is the

(22:44):
unintended consequences, as you just said. So, yeah, head scratching.
He's a one point two average andhe's a nine come three, And think
us first of all, those ofyou older than the age of me,
get it out of your head nowthat last year's championship means anything. I
know that is one thing that getsharped on so much. Oh, he's
a two or three time national Jebbetsdoesn't matter. This season matters. Last

(23:08):
season, doesn't matter this season.You've got a guy with one leg that
couldn't wrestle a full match in theBig ten tournament. You've got to look
at it that perspective mathematically sound.It sucks. I know it does,
because I think everybody in their motherknew he's going to probably think he was
going to place better than you know, actually place hit his placement, but

(23:29):
without knowing what it is. Wedon't have injury reports in college wrestling,
and you know it's not like Kaledishes out that information at the ready on
the RI press conferences. So youknow, we didn't really know the health
of Starachi. So the one thingabout this number statistically is it also is
shrouded in what we didn't know tobegin with. So that right there is

(23:49):
an argumentative point be like, well, how can you well, you don't
know what you don't know, andwhen you apply math for me to something
you don't know, you could getit. You could get the outlier.
But interestingly, if you look atthis this chart, you've got Starachi and
then you've got at one thirty three, you got a Ruja at a sixth,

(24:11):
you know, and he's ranked twopoint eight. But the rest of
it is it's pretty pretty spot onbetween the poles and the seeds. Yeah,
there were a couple ones that Ilooked at. There were like,
I don't know, because you getthe added weight for winning a conference championship
and at some places like where likelet's I don't want to to crap on

(24:33):
the Mid American Conference, but thereare some weights there that were not as
strong across the board, like theChamp and the Max some year. You
know, this year wasn't as strongas you know, obviously not the Big
ten most of the time, notthe Big twelve, but it you know,
it's not necessarily the SoCon Champ,the MAC Champ, Pack twelve Champ.
Those are the smaller or less tougherconferences in terms of you know,
using your air quotes here than comparedto the Big ten. But you know,

(24:56):
those those tournament titles waited the same. So that's something where you could
get you like, well, thisthis guy in the MAC is seated in
the top here, and is hereally there? And in some cases I
like like Peyton Keller for example,he basically kind of backed that up a
little bit. So, uh,that's one of those things where it's like,
okay, we'll look at that.But those are some things that you
also got to remember. The systemhas been gained to the point they have

(25:18):
to create the rules to make sureit's equitable and fair and at the same
point keep people from gaming the system. So you know, Veto lost to
one guy twice who is the twoseed. Uh, that's I think the
Veto is the one I probably hadthe bigger, bigger head scratch about in
stratch because you know, Vito wasn'tone hundred percent healthy all year and he,
you know, got healthy enough tocatch fire and have a pretty good

(25:41):
tournament. So now we're going totalk about correlation coefficients. What guards before
we before we jump into that,can you kind of go through that,
you know, in a non statmanner and explain what they mean? Yes,
we need you to be the Sultanof sane right now. Give me

(26:02):
some of the sense. Help mea sane just a sane rationale or sane
explanation of what correlation coefficient is forthe uninitiated. Okay, certainly, correlation
coefficient ranges from plus one to negativeone. Okay. Plus one is a
perfect correlation. Positive negative one isa negative correlation. Zero has no relationship.

(26:26):
To give you an example, apositive correlation of plus one would be
the speed limit you're driving and howmany miles you go. Okay. A
negative correlation would be temperature in theamount of clothing you wear. Okay,
you get all bundled up if it'szero, if its one hundred out,
you wear a T shirt, right, okay? And then no correlation is

(26:47):
things that have nothing to do withanything. The team that wins the World
Series has nothing to do with PennState winning the wrestling title. Okay,
They're just totally random. Okay,now, I hope everyone kind of got
something out of that. Now,on the next slot, I tried to
say Layman's terms here. Okay,the next slide would chase it does up

(27:11):
on the screen. It has threerows. The first row is the correlation
of all thirty three seeds and theplace. Now, when I use the
word place here, I'm not talkingabout all American placing. I'm talking about
the numbers I gave you all theway from one to thirty three, Okay,
and if you see that, theyare strongly correlated the seeds in the

(27:34):
place. So whatever system we're usingworks out well. Okay, the next
row does the top eight seeds andplace, and the next row does the
top eight rank in place. Now, the reason that the top thirty three

(27:56):
I'll do better than the top eight, I'll try to say this in Layman's
terms. The place is in thereal place in the all American places only
go to eight, so that numberis not as going to be close to
the other ones. Okay, Sodon't take from that chart that they're doing
a horrible job predicting the all Americans, but a good job predicting thirty third
place. Okay, can I jumpin there? I mean sure, the

(28:21):
next the worst one is one twentyfive being non correlated and all here long
once. I mean you could havetaken the top sixteen seeds, put them
in a basket, and every weekyou were going to have a different Uh
you know they were going to beplaced differently. Yeah, no seeds.

(28:42):
That's strange. One through thirty threewas one hundred percent not correlated to whatever.
I don't know. I don't know. It is like, you know,
whoever was one? No? Well, and in this case we had
one of the few times the oneseed doesn't place at all. It's only
happened thirteen times since nineteen seventy nine. But it's like, uh, yeah,
if you show this, to showthis to person on the street that
doesn't know anything about numbers. Butyeah, of course one twenty five was

(29:04):
not going to be mathematically in tunewith what we were expecting. Yeah,
that's guys, that's a good signfor the sport that there's so much parody.
I mean, you know, whowants to go to a tournament when
you know who's gonna win every darnweight class and every beaut I mean,
it would take the fun out ofit. Okay, Now the next slide

(29:27):
then what we have is slide thirtyfour. Okay. If anybody's wondering about
the seeding system and they don't likeit, blah blah blah, the correlation
between the rank and the seeds arebasically as close to positive one as you
can be. Okay. Two ofthe things that aren't real are the furthest

(29:51):
away is the weight classes with theRuga and Starrucci, and we've already wrent
over that and the Keller thing thatJason mentioned earlier at fifty seven. Okay,
So all right, so summon up. Do you like the fact the

(30:11):
mathematical system as opposed to people likeme sitting in a room the night before
for hours and hours on and arguingabout who the seed is because you know,
in nineteen seventy three, this guybeat this guy, and you know
he's always you know, he's betternow. But yes, Kevin, I
love the new system. And here'sone of the reasons. We used to

(30:33):
find out Wednesday night after the coachesbanquet, what the brackets were. I
don't mean Wednesday night, like theweek before like we do now. I'm
talking about a couple hours before thetournament started. Okay, so it's a
huge time saver. It makes everything, I think a lot better for it.
Sure, sometimes people have to dropout due injuries at all, but

(30:56):
I love the new system a thing. Also new system, I mean like
our qualifying system has been around fora decade and a half now, so
like what in wrestling parlance knew whatis new because like a lot of things
that really aren't new, they've justbeen not like it used to be now.

(31:18):
I also want to take issue withwith the question and the concept of
smoke filled rooms. The only wrestlersI've ever seen smoke or in Eastern Europe,
so I don't know how I mean. And Bucky mo On so you
know, the only I want toknow where the wrestling coaches were smoking cigarettes
in these in these things back inthe day, because even they knew it

(31:40):
was okay, yeah I gotcha,it wasn't got you. There wasn't actually
smoke in the mooom, but justan old say no, the smoke was
coming out of the coaches ears.That's where it was coming from. That's
how we do it. Now,now it's all clear. I get it.
Forget it took me forty years toreal that. We just now figured

(32:00):
it out. You learn something beyondcorrelational coefficients on the mat stat show.
Yes, yes, yeah, thePierson correlation coefficients Pierson Yeah, next slide
guys, all right here we go. All right, so we've covered it
in wrestling. So also something thatthe whole nation covers at the same time

(32:22):
as the NCAA men's basketball Now,how do their how did their seeds correlate
with the tournament? Okay, theNCAA basketball I think right after the show,
you could probably watch the prospective seedsfor the twenty twenty five tournament because
they cover that endlessly. Okay,they haven't even played a game yet,

(32:43):
they'll cover it. Okay. Souh actually, so I did the correlations
on those two and you see theslide up on the board. The experts
in basketball, and this is alldone by human beings. Okay, it's
not as accurate as our mathematical systemthat we do in wrestling. So anybody
who likes to talk about that wehave a better system in wrestling than basketball

(33:07):
does. For the twenty twenty fourseason. That's not to say it's been
like that forever. Okay, it'sfor basketball. All that is is something
to fill airspace and sell advertising.That's what it is. Okay, Now,

(33:28):
Slide forty one all right, somethingthat's been going on in the last
couple of years. You know,there, all of a sudden, we
had this concept of the portal.It's Jason, that is relatively new.
And how many of those wrestlers thathave gone into the portal were there?

(33:52):
And you know, how many allAmericans? And did we have a champion?
And I see it's partly on thescreen, but yeah, those listening
along do not have the answer.But yeah, those watching on the screen
and those accompanying with the Slide show, which are again in the show notes
like they are every week for thirtyone episodes. So yeah, so where
are we at on that glen?Okay? So here's where we're out of

(34:15):
that. And since this show didstort out with a solar eclipse, something
new in the solar system might notbe new in the wrestling world. And
I'm old and all that stuff.That's why I still call this the new
system. You are old, Yes, I am okay. So in twenty
twenty four, okay, there weresixty transfers guys, all right, got

(34:37):
qualified? There were actually I actuallyhave to go back and I need to
go back and find the list ofactual how many guys actually that were rostered
from other teams. I have thatnumber somewhere. It was nuts anyway,
Yeah, yeah, okay, Soeighteen of those transfers placed, So twenty
two and a half percent of allall Americans. Okay, we're transfers.

(35:00):
Thirty percent of all wrestlers in thetournament were transfers, all right, so
that is ah, that is abig number. Seventy seven percent of all
non transfer is placed, Okay,which makes sense. That's about the same

(35:23):
number relations there, all right.So transfers are a part of this world,
guys. I don't know how tosay it other than it's here to
stay and we just got to dealwith it. Yeah, And there was
a it's not official official like stampedyet, but it was approved that now
if you're academically eligible, you canbe transferred. You can transfer as many

(35:46):
times as you want and be immediatelyeligible. It used to be, okay,
you get the get you can transfer, and it was your second transfer
that you were kind of locked upon. But now it's like, if
your academics academically eligible and on pathtwo get your degree, you can you
can jump from school to school,to school to school. Right now,
we're still seeing the last this shouldbe the last year of the extra COVID

(36:07):
years plus the grad transfer. SoI'd think this number is going to go
down. But then again, nowthe ability to transfer multiple times, I
think that's definitely gonna go up,because logically we're gonna be like, all
right, I don't like it here, I don't like it here, I
don't like it here. I somebodycould go, somebody could try to go
to say, all right, NickSiriano, I got you beat. I'm

(36:28):
gonna try to place four times atfour different schools. How about that?
So we've done any weight classes.Now the next thing is gonna be we're
gonna not only do it in fourdifferent weight classes, he did it in
four different schools. Yeah, let'ssee if that happens. Yeah yeah,
or it's going to get so badyou can transfer in between the quarters in

(36:49):
the semis granted, I gotta Iactually gotta make I gotta adend my own
statement there Serriano did not place walleat Penn State. He did qualify while
at Penn State. So before youjump down my throat on sorry, I'm
not placing I caught my error there. There's a couple names in there that
have placed it at multiple schools,and there's actually I think somebody this year
in the ANAI ended up placing nowtheir third division. So that's another thing

(37:14):
to look at that. But Iknow it's slide forty three. Okay.
So we've talked about the scoring.So how were the team champions from all
the different championship tournaments this year?We had NCAA, NAIA, NCWA,

(37:40):
What states are they from? Andhow many were in private and public schools?
Okay, thank you for that question, Kevin. Just in case anybody
who's wondering, there are eighteen differentnational collegiate tournaments each year now for wrestling,
Okay, in four year college.So okay, So you have the

(38:04):
three men's NCUBA, the one men'sNAIA, then two men's NCWA, the
women's will soon be the NCAA hopefullyin by twenty twenty six, the women's
NAIA, and the women's NCWA.Okay, So I'm not going to list
all the champions are there for youguys to look at. There are schools

(38:25):
from fourteen different states that want ateam title or were a team runner up.
I think that is great, guys. Okay, and no surprise that
Iowa had three and Pennsylvania had two. Okay. As far as your question,
Kevin, public and private, seventytwo percent were from private schools.

(38:49):
And if you think about it,we've learned that's where the growth of wrestling
is coming. So that really shouldsurprise you, guys. Yeah, and
the lions share of the NAIA areprivate schools. There are not that many
state institutions in the nai with wrestlingprograms. There are, and it did
Division three level as well, wheremost of the state schools, the public
schools and Division three reside in thein the Sunny System or in the in

(39:12):
the Wisconsin Conference. So those arethe ones there was. There was an
interesting name in the in the championsin the n c w A you had
Bellermine winning the NCWA. They werein that between period this year and so
next year they are going to beeligible for the D one championship. Yes

(39:34):
they're and they are you know bythe way tip of the cap to Ned
shuck at Bellerman because what what hehas done is one when that whole program
is such an interesting story to beginwith. I'm gonna get off on a
tangent here real quick. Saint Catherinewas an NAI school that started a wrestling
program. The school closed right downthe road. Bellerman, which was then

(39:58):
Division two, said all right,we'll take all your guys, we'll start
a wrestling program. Then the schoolreclassifies. Ned comes in as the new
head coach once they start this Divisionone era and then they're in this four
year purgatory of moving from their allair athletics programs. And so Ned said,
he embraced it. He's got bigcrowds. They're scheduling within the means

(40:21):
they're getting. They're developing a winningculture. When you really know that you're
you're gonna be outgunned if you tryto go a full like full board D
one schedule. But they scheduled alot of the teams in the Southern Conference,
which they are comparable with their funding, they're increasing the you know,
their recruiting base say hey, we'reD one. This is what it is.
So I give Ned. Ned hastaken the transition game. For for

(40:45):
for wrestling programs in a positive direction, whereas Linnenwood and Queen's universities are like,
well, we're transferring, we weretransitioning, and we clearly are not
ready to go D one in anyof these others. So we're just going
to drop a bunch of them.So when I think cut ten Queens,
cut wrestling, and just I youknow, that's what I worry about is
the transitional years. And Ned hasshown the blueprint. So wrestling coaches at

(41:08):
those schools that may be considering,give Ned Shuck a call. Here's how
you can build a program when youhave no you know, NCAA postseason.
You use the NCWA as your bufferzone. And good on Ned, Good
on Bellerman. So good point,Kevin, to bring them up, Yeah,
Kevin, very good point. Okay, slide forty eight. Okay,

(41:34):
so we've been talking about beat burms. Now we need to get with Jason.
I don't remember seeing the slide inthe pre show. Glenn, this
is a surprise. Come on,man, all right, what do we
get? Yeah? Yeah, you'renever prepared for wrestling trivia, but you
can do stats at trivia at thedrop of a hat. I've been in
the bar with you doing it.Yeah, I've definitely been at the bar

(41:59):
doing trivia before. All right,So here's what we've got. It's a
bunch and this is not and Iwill say this to clarify, this is
not a fully inclusive list. Thereare a couple of things that we sent
through to Mike's newsletter that he sendsout for the NWCA, and at a

(42:19):
second glance, there were a coupleof things that I had missed out on
some things, but there were youknow, there were some names out here
and some data, so first yearprograms that had qualifiers at the national championships.
Of course, with the women's growth, we've got the way it is.
Iowa won the NCWWC because we're playingalphabet soup right now. N JCU,

(42:39):
they are the Gothic Knights, whichis one of the coolest nicknames in
college sports. New Jersey City University. You know one thing there, Hey,
promote that thing back to a fulltime coaching position. That is my
suggestion there. McKendree, Cameron garnShe's a four time national champion and it
was closed too. She was onthe road. It was a title when

(43:00):
Cameron picked it up. Good winswas. She wrestled with the Olympic Trials
this weekend and that's time for Kevin'snap. In case you can hear that
retirement meetings, I was supposed towake me up from my nap. Yeah,
Menlo won the officially the NAI Championship. Now they were you know they've
got a title when when we're theirinvitational status lords with the Stefano Jelasich was

(43:22):
there the first individual national. WilliamPenn kind of inherited a lot of the
wrestlers from Iowa Wesley and when thatschool closed down. University Cristelle Rodriguez actually
sat right behind me on the planeto and from State College. I sat
next to the head coach, DanaVote on the way out, sat next
to assistant on the way back,and life university coach Ashley Flavin. She

(43:44):
had a seventeen year old national finalistand we've been unable to confirm if that
is a record, if anybody's beenthat young, but we know I know
from watching college hockey this year wehad two seventeen year olds in Division one
turning the college hockey world on itshead, and one of them turned eighteen.
Actually I think, hey, Macklin. Celebrine was the Hobe Baker winner.

(44:06):
He's going to turn eighteen somewhere aroundDraft Day. You know. Zev
Buyam at Denver was a seventeen yearold phenom. I think he's finally turned
eighteen. So hey, give itup for the teenagers. We talked about
it at the Olympic Trials. We'vegot it with McBride at Life, and
then now we've also got it onthe Frozen Ponds too, So it's pretty
nuts. We get seventeen year olds, whereas the trend has been the nineteen

(44:28):
year old college freshman or the twentyyear old red shirt freshman. So give
it up for the teenagers. Ohwait, there's more Glenn killing. No,
this is one I know very verywell because I was with the program
as it's launched and chronicled at LittleRock Neil Ayersman with two all Americans,
the first two in program history atBoom right there in a ser Bailey Stephen

(44:52):
Little and Kaylee Nole. The siddown there is like, you know how
many times I've written Stephen Little Rockin the in the press releases, you
know, on the Sere Bailey andand Steven Little both win in the Blood
round top twenty finish. Neil Arismanwas Coach of the Year and Tournament Coach
of the Year. So they werereally kind of one of those fields.
Like last year whyat Hendrickson was likethe crowd favorite for the Air Force Academy.

(45:15):
This year it was Little Rock thatwas the crowd, you know,
the crowd favorite of outside of youknow, the team race Manavallo, the
new program in Alabama. Grand ValleyState in Michigan had just brought that back.
By the way, in case you'rewondering about Grand Valley State, just
outside of Grand Rapids and Allendale.The president Filhamina Mantella. Her son is
Vic Avery, the All American fromEdinburgh, So there's the wrestling tie in

(45:38):
case you're wondering there. Their women'sprogram will start next year in which Sage
Mortimer competed in the trials. She'stransferring from king to Grand Valley. And
Jake Short, you know that wasthe head coach of Augsburg as the head
women's coach there. Alfred State,the Ox Gang. They are the Pioneers,
but they've got a big, bigcow, big ox on. It's

(45:58):
an ox It's not a cow.They actually sent me a Shirt coach Signarelli
with the first All Americans since theymoved from n JCAA to Division three.
Bismarck State College is going from theNJCAA to the NAI, although not as
fast as you know. Some ofthe press might have had the press release
on that may have jumped the gun. But that's a school to keep an
eye on there. Saint John Fisherhad a graduate student come in place.

(46:22):
They say they had a program.They've had one other All American, Alex
Samson ends up hitting the podium forthem. Those are things that keen on
Division threes. Coast Guard Academy inGreensboro College down in North Carolina, Coast
Guards up up in New England,New London, Connecticut, if I'm not
mistaken, first national champions and youknow the kid from Coastguard was the ow

(46:44):
So that was a big win therefor the program. And Westminster with a
right Mike Ironman has known for hisfunk and the kid they had at ninety
seven was just lanky, funky,and yeah, he pinned a lot of
people. So Westminster they are theblue Jays. There's a couple of west
Miters, just the one in Missouri. Their first college all American, Glenn,
you're gonna surprise me with any more? Yeah, here we go.

(47:06):
I'm just gonna take a deep breathreal quick. All right, we'll continuing.
Aaron Brooks, who just made theOlympic team, and Carter Staracci,
four time national champs. First timewe've ever had two in one tournament.
We almost had it last year,but well, you know, things happen
then we have. You know,three of the seven happened the last two

(47:27):
years. Of course, Fixed RocchiBrooks four time finalists. Fix unfortunately has
the distinction of being the only fourtime runner up in Division one history.
Oh man, A lot of this, a lot of this history is being
rewritten as we go. As yousee right there, eight of those twenty
four happened in the last six tournaments, so we were in any golden age
of it. Tom Barelli, weknew about his retirement. John Smith,

(47:51):
who ironically, I guess ironically oris it I don't know, correlatively whatever
we're using math terms. John Smithand Tom Burrelly were both head coaches at
their respective institutions for the same amountof years. They both retired. We
knew Tom was John retired a weekand a half ago at the time when
we record this. So the longesttenured head coach as we have on the

(48:14):
screen Jay Weiss from Havard and he'sat three decades. And a little trivia
there in case you're wondering where withKevin without looking, where did Jay Weiss
go to college? Where did hewrestle in college? I don't know.
He is the only Division one headcoach that went to this particular university or

(48:35):
actually college. That's a hint,F and M. There you go.
He's a diplomat and now he's aCrimson, which is two of the more
odd massive. It does a greatjob there. I mean they had year
in and year out, they've gotsomebody, you know, in the running
to be an All American. Herewe go, more NAI stuff for you,

(49:00):
Mary. That's the one in Kansasfirst national champ. Chuck Kearney is
the head coach. Uh there hewas at Oregon. Eastern Oregon had his
first national champion since reinstatement. Theyhad they had some All Americans back in
the day too, but it's it'sit's it's a been. When Avalo with
its first All American Western Wyoming withthe back to back national championships in the

(49:20):
NJACAA Terry Pack at South East CommunityCollege which is in Lincoln, Nebraska,
with the All Americans Southwestern Michigan,which just announced last week it's adding its
women's program now first All Americans.Three statement Indian Hills Community College that's in
Iowa with the national champion SNOW whichis in Utah with the National champions Southeast
also mentioned them, Iowa Central withNational Champions and such. So a lot

(49:43):
of a lot of a lot ofstatistics there, and then there you go.
Where's your where's your where's your WayamanMary tie In. I was waiting
for it. I was waiting forit, Glenn, Okay, and I
see you were so unprepared for that. Jason, you just did a great
job. Is summing that all up? All right, just let's let's stop.
Let's pull back to curtain here.As as the co host slash producer
of this show, I go throughthese things meticulously and check for I can.

(50:07):
I can correct Glenn's typos. Ican't correct his pronunciation of starrachi,
but I can, however, gethis typos and such. So I'm just
coming I got back from the Olympictrials. As we record this. We're
recording this on Monday. We're releaseson Thursday or Wednesday. Excuse me.
I got back like around midnight,so sorry. I'm this is the most
unprepared for this show. Some ofthe show I'm going through blind. I'm

(50:29):
like, all right, what's onthe next slide, what's on the next
slide? If there's I said thispage, I don't know. I said
it sarcastically. When I meant washow great you weren't doing all that?
You know, even that you didn'thave any time, you didn't need to
be prepared. Don't script. Idon't script. I don't script much.
I don't script much. But yeah, it's like, oh yeah, throw
me that. I was like,oh great, Now I'm gonna talk about

(50:50):
the Boston Marathon, which side note, I'm gonna get off tangent here again.
I loathe the Boston Red Sox BostonMarathon uniforms. I don't like those.
You're the Red Sox. You staywith your Red Sox colors. You
look like a USFL team playing baseI'm leaving that in the show. Normally
i'd cut out a bad take.I'm leaving that one in there. I

(51:12):
hate the Boston Marathon uniforms Red Soxfans live with it. Okay, this
is about the marathon and not aboutthe socks. Okay. Kelly Powell ran
the Boston Marathon in three twenty eightthirty six. Matt status is name.
He heard the Tribe Wrestler Alumni ofthe year. Okay, once against a
great time. Yeah, I meanhotch off to Kelly, I don't have

(51:37):
Bobby Powell overquarter to begin with nodthe aforementioned not boog boog pal, but
your boom po. Yes, yes, exactly, go ahead, Kevin.
Okay. For the episode number one, the new takedown points three points made
an instrumental for Matt's stats to investigatethe it had on the NCUBA Championship matches.

(52:02):
Two bonus points were up over fifteenpercent at the NCUAA Men's Championship,
tech falls are up one hundred andforty five percent for the season. That's
a that's an amazing difference. Threefifty of all points in the quarters,
semis and finals. In two sevennineteen, We're from Takedowns four, scoring

(52:30):
was only up point sixty eight pointsper match. In the twenty twenty four
D one Championships. You know comparedto twenty seventeen twenty twenty two. Thereby
there's less there's fewer scoring moves,and that's something we're gonna look at deeper,
and that's slot number five. We'regonna do a deep dive into all
the points scored and see if wecan figure out this better reason for these

(52:53):
correlations. Number six Erujian Starachi beingseated solo is no reason to scrap the
current seating system. Seven seeds atthe NCAA Men's D one are highly correlated
with the average final pull rankings.Eight colleges from fourteen different states placed in

(53:16):
the top two team standings in theeighteen collegiate national tournaments. That just shows
how you know it's across the country. Nine. Very interestingly, twenty two
percent of the top eight places weretransfers at the twenty twenty four Men's D
one Championships, and ten seventy fivepercent of the top two teams at all

(53:39):
collegiate national tournaments were private schools.That's where the growth is in college wrestling.
Thank you, Kevin Okay, Nowthe next show. I got a
lot of people asking me at thenationals, and since then we're penned States
twenty twenty four before stands, andthat's exactly what the next show is going

(54:02):
to be. There we're going toupdate episode twenty one, which we did
on the Greatest Teams Ever. Sothat's what we're going to do on the
next show. On in May's show. So Kevin and Jason has everything else
to say, Well, that's thatcould be a pretty short show. The
best most points ever scored. Sothat's you know, there you go,

(54:22):
that's yours. That's the end ofthat mass No, I'm just kidding.
So it'd be to go in andreadjust not just readjust. One thing is
I don't like the you know,using the term adjusted scoring because you wrestle
with the rules that you have.But that's another that's another that's an argument
for for a beer and some bartrivia. But again, that impressed,
that performance was impressive and the thinkthey did it with that. And but

(54:43):
although Minnesota alums still pop the champagnein the bus don't place, you know,
I was like they still got theonly division one that had in the
ten for ten era, because rememberthere was an era where we had eleven
weight classes. So uh, youknow, that's always always fun. I
always like arguing the stats and thenit's a comparative fun. It's fun.
So yeah, that team was wasMonsters this year, so a lot of

(55:06):
bonus points, a lot of alot of impressive performances. So be curious
on where they officially line up withhis story, his historical preference. Man,
I've talked all week and I can'ttalk on this show. What the
heck. So the other interesting thingwas they scored the most points, but
to me a bigger thing was themargin of victory. Oh yeah, that's

(55:30):
that might be the stat I meanthat's in the guide. Yeah yeah,
yep. But anyway, guys,that's what the next show is going to
be about. And on behalf ofJason Bryant, Kevin Hazard, Glenn Gornley
signing off for Matt Stats. Seeyou next month.