Bloody Elbow’s dirty dozen college wrestling rankings: Primer and predicitions

On the NCAA Division I level, wrestling practice has officially started. All these teams have been working out six days a week, sometimes more than once a day, for more than a month now, but now they will have full length, full contact wrestling practices every day in their respective wrestling rooms.

This means that a month from now, intercollegiate wrestling competition will be in full swing. Because this excites me way more than it should, I have decided to write a series of posts that will rank the top twelve Division I wrestling teams headed into the 2014-2015 season. This ‘dirty dozen’ ranking will consist of the teams whom I project will finish first through twelfth in the standings at the end of the 2015 NCAA Wrestling Championships in March (held in St. Louis once more this season).

I will warn that a ranking of this nature is incredibly unscientific, and will almost certainly make me look like a fool come spring time. This year proves particularly difficult to predict, as the lack of a clear cut team-champion favorite should result in the most wide open race for first place in recent memory. Also, readers should understand that none of this analysis has any relevance to dual meets, which reward a different sort of team composition than the NCAA tournament.

Allow me to explain.

Last year, Penn State won its fourth straight national championship with 109.5 team points, narrowly edging out second-place Minnesota with 104 team points. Two Penn State wrestlers, David Taylor and Ed Ruth, together accounted for 51.5 of those points, almost exactly half of the number of points required to win a championship. This is typical of large individual wrestling tournaments like the NCAA tournament, where the point allocation favors teams with a smaller core of superstar wrestlers.

Just for reference, an NCAA champion automatically earns 22 points for his team, while a runner-up finisher will collect no less than 16 points. Meanwhile, a wrestler who finishes in eighth place, barely in All American position, can wind up with as few as 5 points. Teams who want to win a national title will need one of these five-point wrestlers or two, but even an entire lineup of them would be hard-pressed to finish even in the tournament’s top 5.

Of course, none of this factors in bonus points- team points earned each time a wrestler registers a win by major decision, tech-fall, fall or default. Last year, David Taylor collected a whopping five bonus points, which was Penn State’s margin of victory.

The above should explain why teams with three wrestlers with a real shot of winning a national championship, and little else, will appear higher in this ranking than a team with seven guys who may or may not make it past the round of 12 at NCAAs. The latter is a fine wrestling team for sure, and one which will win plenty of team vs team dual meets, but it is not built for success at the national tournament.

2014 NCAA Wrestling Championships Team Scores

Here I should also make it clear that I will not engage in the messy business of providing individual rankings. I got an inside look at this process at another publication, which does as good a job as possible at ranking individuals, and the whole thing looks like a nightmare of complications. Furthermore, the task is utterly thankless, and leads to endless criticism from certain corners of the wrestling world. So God bless wrestler rankers, they are brave and try hard, but I will not join their ranks.

I will however, just for fun, provide my prediction for individual NCAA champs for the 2014-15 season.

125 pounds- Jesse Delgado, Illinois

I hate watching Delgado wrestle, but I will never make the mistake of picking against him again. Cornell’s Nahshon Garrett has the most dazzling array of wrestling skills in the nation at this weight, but as we in the wrestling world have seen time and time again, champions win championships. Delgado may be an eyesore, but he’s also a two-time national champion, and in March he should win his third.

133 pounds- AJ Schopp, Edinboro.

Schopp is a nasty bundle of legs, limbs and counters, and must be a giant pain in the ass to wrestle. Last year Schopp missed out on the finals due only to last-second heroics from Iowa’s Tony Ramos. This year the top end of this weight class has cleared out, leaving an open path for the Fighting Scots of Edinboro to claim another national champ (which they do with shocking regularity).

141 pounds- Logan Stieber, Ohio State.

This is the easiest pick out of the ten weights. Stieber should win his fourth NCAA title, but it won’t be as easy as one would think. Edinboro’s Mitchell Port is a tough bastard, and is a live underdog as the number two wrestler at this weight. In the end, however, I can’t pick against the Buckeye.

149 pounds- Hunter Stieber, Ohio State.

I think that the younger Stieber’s talent level is heads and shoulders above the competition at 149 pounds. The only potential issue he might face is the move up in weight, but after seeing him win a gold medal at 70 kg at the 2014 Pan American Championships in freestyle, and looking very large in the process, I don’t think that 149 pounds will give him any problems.

157 pounds- James Green, Nebraska.

This might be the toughest weight to pick, but I’m going to go with Nebraska’s James Green. This is Green’s senior year, and he has come incredibly far since he first appeared as an extremely talented, but extremely flawed, freshman. Green has made the improvements, and put in the work in the summer (where he has proved to be a world-class freestyler), which will finally put him over the top.

165 pounds- Alex Dieringer, Oklahoma State.

Two years ago, I wondered why everyone was so high on Dieringer- a lanky freshman who seemed promising but not eye-popping. At the end of last season, I openly wondered how the 2014 NCAA champ at 157 pounds will ever lose again in college. At last year’s national championship, the Oklahoma State Cowboy looked untouchable, and huge. In March I was matside during warmups for the national semi-finals, and no other wrestler looked bigger for his weight than Dieringer, who dwarfed his competition. I envision that the move up to 165 pounds will help and not hinder Dieringer.

174 pounds- Mike Evans, Iowa.

I don’t even want to make a pick at this weight, which features a quartet of ultra-tough, multiple-time All American wrestlers from the Big Ten, all of who have roughly equal chances to take the crown. I can all but guarantee that either Evans, Roger Kokesh of Nebraska, Logan Storley of Minnesota or Matt Brown of Penn State will win the title, but cannot see any of the four as an overwhelming favorite. I picked Evans here because his long dormant neutral offense finally started to materialize at the end of last year, and also because I think that Iowa fans will leave St. Louis fairly disappointed, and a title for one of their favorite sons will ease their pain somewhat (sort of like last year).

184 pounds- Gabe Dean, Cornell.

I think a big part of Cornell’s ascendancy as a top wrestling program has been Coach Rob Koll’s ability to attract top recruits with the surprising combination of the academic background to gain entry into an Ivy league school, and amazing raw athleticism. Cornell’s best wrestlers over the past decade and a half, as well as their top competitors in this year’s lineup, move around the mat with explosion, grace, and the ability to execute the most complex techniques easily.

If you watched Dean beat Ed Ruth last year, and medal in the Junior World Championships this past summer, you would know that the Big Red sophomore possesses the sort of elite quickness and power which can turn a promising wrestler into one of the all-time greats. I anticipate that this year, Dean wins the first of multiple national titles.

197 pounds- Kyven Gadsen, Iowa State.

If I had the proper amount of testicular fortitude, I would pick Ohio State wunderkind Kyle Snyder at this weight. Snyder is perhaps the greatest American upper weight prospect ever. Insanely gifted as he may be, Snyder is still only a true freshman in college, and I just can’t pencil him in yet as the national champion.

Instead I’ll pick Iowa State’s Kyven Gadsen because I think he will have made the necessary improvements to get past other top competitors like Minnesota’s Scott Schiller and Missouri’s J’Den Cox (who won the national championship as a true freshman last year).

I think I’ll live to regret this pick, and I probably make it because Gadsen is a great story and wears a really cool retro robe to warm up in. I wonder where Gadsen purchased such a thing.

285 pounds- Adam Coon, Michigan.

Last year, Coon, a Cadet World Champion and true freshman, took the heavyweight class by storm. After a variety of high profile wins, including one over two-time national champion Anthony Nelson of Minnesota and another against eventual national Champion Nick Gwiazdowski of NC State, Coon vaulted to the number 1 ranking in the nation.

Then, as we often see with even the most spectacular true freshmen, Coon’s season had a rotten ending. At the Big Ten tournament he suffered two shocking upsets, and barely qualified for the NCAA Tournament. Then at the NCAA Tournament, he lost heart breaking matches in both the quarterfinals and round of 12, finishing outside of All-American Status.

This year, I believe that a more battle hardened, more developed Coon will once again ascend to the top ranking in the nation, only this time his form won’t fall apart, and he will finish the season as an NCAA champion.

We will take a look at the number 12 team in my ‘Dirty Dozen’ tomorrow. Enjoy this ranking.