Do these Numbers Mean Anything?

[Mattski]

Originally posted by bnicolls:

Originally posted by sloehawk:

Originally posted by moug:

Top 10 recruits who have won titles in the last 5 years by HS graduation year.



2010- 1/10-granted he won 4 titles, but if you consider each of the 10 had 4 years to compete it's still 4/40

2011- 0/10

2012- 1/10- Tshirt

2013- 3/10- Cox, Martinez, Tomasello- Martinez seems the only one who I would say is a true front runner going into next year, while I thought the same about Cox this year and he finished 5th.

2014- 0/1- I believe Snyder is the only one to burn the RS- not enough of a sample for the class, but safe to assume he'll put up some good career totals for tOSU at NCAAs in his career.



What does this mean? Not real sure. Maybe these rankings just stink?

I've said all along I love what J'Den Cox CAN bring to the table, he's got all the ability in the world it appears, but he has never appeared to have the "want-to" every single time I've seen him wrestle, which isn't a lot, but it was consistent in the small sample size I witnessed. He's in that camp that one little misstep puts him on the back side real quick. I am elated that he and Jason Tsirtsis are no longer in the 4 Timer conversation, only due to their wrestling styles. They both seem like really good kids from afar, so appreciate that part of it, hate the style. And since they aren't Hawks, I hope they don't change their ways, I think both have far more to offer.



As far as the full-ride offers, I am on board to do just that, BUT it is not a predictor of future success. You CAN get burned if Stud of the Decade doesn't pan out. Choose very, very, carefully.

Yes, choose wisely. We thought 5 years ago the senior class had multiple NC's and team NC's in them. 5 years later, none and none and alot of scholly dough burned thru

The point being made is that the class you mention, while most were very solid contributors, did not have 1-2 cream of the crop blue chippers we truly need to catch psu and tosu. They were a group of great 3-8 slots on your roster types but not where our top 2-3 point scorers need to come from. We need to make some changes bc the competition sure has.
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[artradley]

Originally posted by WWDMHawkeye:

Originally posted by DirtyJohns:
It's easy to say that we need that absolute stud every couple of years but we are now fighting for that stud with PSU, tOSU, OSU, Cornell, Mizzou, Minn and others. So you've got maybe 2 or 3 studs on average in each class and it's got to be the right personality fit to boot. It's tough sledding, especially when said recruits are typically reside in the home state of those schools we are battling. The Gable mystique is fading and these kids were not even born the last time Gable was coach.

I think that is one of the reasons Morningstar was hired because his personality is a bit different(understatement of the year) than that of the Brands and he can develop some of the necessary relationships with guys that may otherwise not give Brands a minute of their time. I think Metcalf is and will be even more of an asset for recruiting if we can keep him after his career is over.

Hall looks like a sure thing and a good fit to me and would absolutely be worthy of a full ride. We've got to put the full press on that kid. I don't know as much about Lee.

Good post. As for Lee, I'd say he's at least as tough as Hall, pound-for-pound. Kid is phenomenal. Landing those two studs would dramatically swing recruiting in our favor and set us up for a great run, considering the other studs who would be on board with them.

Agree with Lee. We all would love Suriano on board, but in fact Lee is probably a little bit better even though he's a year younger.

 

[sloehawk]

Originally posted by TarpHawk:
Fun With Stats:

In support of those who say P4P HS rankings don't matter: 3 of this year's NCAA champs were ranked below #50 in HS: Houdashelt was #53 in 2010, Gadson was #65 in 2010, and Dean was #73 in 2012.

However, in support of those who say P4P HS rankings do matter: 7 of this year's 10 champs were ranked in the top 25 P4P.

Every #1 P4P over the past 5 years placed among the top 4 at NCAAs this year:
Stieber #1 in 2010McIntosh #1 in 2011Tsirtsis #1 in 2012B Jordan #1 in 2013Snyder #1 in 2014Even Moisey, the unseeded and seemingly unheralded true freshman who made the finals at 133, was ranked #34 in 2014.

In short, while the correlation isn't precise, it's still pretty clear.

Now for more fun:

In the "One of These Things Is Not Like the Other" category:
2011 P4P rankings:
#53. Nat Brown
#55. Klapprodt
#62. C Medberry
#66. N Garrett

In the "Two of These Things Are Not Like the Other" category:
2010 P4P rankings:
#65. Gadson
#74. M Kelly
#75. Delgado
#79. Baldosaro
#81. C. Dardanes
#87. Schopp

So maybe we're choosing the wrong guys, or maybe we're just not developing them correctly. Choose your poison.

Not questioning your list Tarp, or whose rankings they were, but wouldn't Destin McCauley also have been considered the #1 overall in 2010 or 11?

I found this old article about Destin, dated Sept. 20th, 2010, in what was his Senior Year I believe.

McCauley, the first Minnesota
wrestler to be the top recruit in the country, told the Pioneer Press
his three finalists are Ohio State, Iowa and Wisconsin.


Helping guide the McCauleys
through the recruiting process is longtime Apple Valley assistant coach
Bill Demaray, who along with Jackson has built the Eagles into a
national wrestling power. Demaray was a two-time national champion
wrestling at North Dakota State in 1971 and '72.

"It's not rocket science what we're doing with him,'' Demaray
said. "We're collecting as much information as we can on the colleges
and making sure it's a good fit academically and researching the
coaching staffs. Then we list the pros and cons. He's been offered a
full ride by all of these schools, which is a situation that most
wrestlers won't find themselves in. Destin has done a really nice job in
this process.''

------------------------------------------------------------------

So according to this, as had been rumored at the time, Iowa was willing to give a full-ride, but balked at the OTC arrangement and/or not redshirting I believe (which I wholeheartedly agree with - the OTC part - the non-redshirting thing I have some wiggle room with for certain).

Obviously McCauley didn't pan out for whatever reason, perhaps he's still a phenom today had he just quit jacking around and committed to a program, enrolled in school and got on with it. He is one of the "cautionary tales" for the best P4P'ers for sure.

 

[TarpHawk]

Agreed, Sloe. I went with D1collegewrestling.net rankings because they list prior years. They had McCauley at #2 in 2011, behind McIntosh.

 

[Flying_Tiger]

Tarp, I agree with the point you were making but just an fyi, Matt Brown was ranked #77 out of high school.

 

[rossel 33]

Originally posted by Flying_Tiger:
Tarp, I agree with the point you were making but just an fyi, Matt Brown was ranked #77 out of high school.

Another interesting fyi is Jordan Burroughs was #94 coming out of HS, according to d1 Wrestling rewind. It goes without saying that these rankings are just educated guesses, but not to say they don't have validity.

Statistically speaking, in the long run, the top career point getters at the ncaa championships have a greater likelihood of coming out of the top ten compared to any other decile. And the top 20 will typically outperform those ranked 21-40, etc.

 

[moug]

Not sure if this has been discussed in general or at length, but aren't the scholarship $ given to each wrestler adjusted each year?

Not saying this is ethical or that is does or doesn't happen..............wouldn't one approach be to give out full rides to top end recruits and then scale them back if they don't perform on the mat in subsequent years. I know in FB and BB some programs have reputations for encouraging athletes to leave the program when it would seem they don't fit into future plans, but does that happen in wrestling as well? From the outside, the way coaches and athletes speak during interviews, there seems to be more loyalty in wrestling so I would guess it's less common.

 

[xjohnx]

Intermat has an article on their site about what the 2015 AAs were ranked coming out of high school.

22.5% were in the top 10 P4P.
38.75% were in the top 20 P4P.
65% were in the top 50 P4P.
82.5% were in the top 100 P4P.

Kinda interesting.

 

[Fan In Black]

Originally posted by xjohnx:
Intermat has an article on their site about what the 2015 AAs were ranked coming out of high school.



22.5% were in the top 10 P4P.

38.75% were in the top 20 P4P.

65% were in the top 50 P4P.

82.5% were in the top 100 P4P.



Kinda interesting.

Wow
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[sloehawk]

Originally posted by Fan In Black:

Originally posted by xjohnx:
Intermat has an article on their site about what the 2015 AAs were ranked coming out of high school.



22.5% were in the top 10 P4P.

38.75% were in the top 20 P4P.

65% were in the top 50 P4P.

82.5% were in the top 100 P4P.



Kinda interesting.

Wow
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Not trying to be an ass Fine, but I'm curious what brings the Wow statement out. I guess I would expect to see these numbers, just wonder if I'm missing something obvious or not. Thanks.

 

[hawkeyesports92]

Nice post Pablow. Ohio State and Minn were the favorites to win this year. Some of you wanting to throw full rides at kids have no idea what you are talking about. Ohio State got pretty lucky with Stieber. For every full ride Stieber there are a dozen that blew out a knee, got homesick or love sick, plateaued etc and didn't score 100 NCAA points in their career. We get 9.9 scholarships so if you are offering a full ride you better be damn sure that guy is going to be a 4 time AA and 3 or 4 time finalist. Good luck with that.

 

[Mountain Man Hawk]

Originally posted by xjohnx:
Intermat has an article on their site about what the 2015 AAs were ranked coming out of high school.

22.5% were in the top 10 P4P.
38.75% were in the top 20 P4P.
65% were in the top 50 P4P.
82.5% were in the top 100 P4P.

Kinda interesting.

That's interesting but in order to answer the question posed above about whether we should change our strategy and start offering full rides to top ranked kids, it would be more interesting to see what % of top 10 recruits end up being finalists. As discussed above, a finalist or two are much preferable to AAs in the team race. If it's no better odds than a coin flip that a top 10 recruit will ever be a finalist, I'm not sure I would want to change to that strategy. For instance both Tsirtsis brothers were top recruits but only one of them had a lot of success at nationals and I remember posts on this board from people who were glad we didn't waste a lot of money on the younger one.
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[Fan In Black]

Originally posted by sloehawk:

Originally posted by Fan In Black:

Originally posted by xjohnx:


Intermat has an article on their site about what the 2015 AAs were ranked coming out of high school.



22.5% were in the top 10 P4P.

38.75% were in the top 20 P4P.

65% were in the top 50 P4P.

82.5% were in the top 100 P4P.



Kinda interesting.

Wow

Posted from Rivals Mobile

Not trying to be an ass Fine, but I'm curious what brings the Wow statement out. I guess I would expect to see these numbers, just wonder if I'm missing something obvious or not. Thanks.

Too quick of post by me. At first I thought wow but when you really think about the numbers it makes sense.
Posted from Rivals Mobile

 

[sloehawk]

Originally posted by Fan In Black:

Originally posted by sloehawk:

Originally posted by Fan In Black:

Originally posted by xjohnx:


Intermat has an article on their site about what the 2015 AAs were ranked coming out of high school.



22.5% were in the top 10 P4P.

38.75% were in the top 20 P4P.

65% were in the top 50 P4P.

82.5% were in the top 100 P4P.



Kinda interesting.

Wow

Posted from Rivals Mobile

Not trying to be an ass Fine, but I'm curious what brings the Wow statement out. I guess I would expect to see these numbers, just wonder if I'm missing something obvious or not. Thanks.

Too quick of post by me. At first I thought wow but when you really think about the numbers it makes sense.
Posted from Rivals Mobile

Sorry, I meant Fan, not Fine!

Yeah, I didn't see anything that stood out as super unusual, thought it might just be me.......................

 

[hawks_82]

Originally posted by Mountain Man Hawk:

Originally posted by moug:
Top 10 recruits who have won titles in the last 5 years by HS graduation year.

2010- 1/10-granted he won 4 titles, but if you consider each of the 10 had 4 years to compete it's still 4/40
2011- 0/10
2012- 1/10- Tshirt
2013- 3/10- Cox, Martinez, Tomasello- Martinez seems the only one who I would say is a true front runner going into next year, while I thought the same about Cox this year and he finished 5th.
2014- 0/1- I believe Snyder is the only one to burn the RS- not enough of a sample for the class, but safe to assume he'll put up some good career totals for tOSU at NCAAs in his career.

What does this mean? Not real sure. Maybe these rankings just stink?

I'm surprised more people haven't commented on this. Tarp's post makes a lot of sense but only if we can know in advance which recruits are going to pan out. It would be interesting to see the numbers going back further than 2010 but it seems that it's a bit of a crap shoot in picking which top recruit will pan out. Correct me if I'm wrong but I seem to remember on this board a long time ago some criticism of Jim Zalesky's approach tying up too much recruiting $$ in a couple of wrestlers (like the older Tshirt for instance). From what I can tell there are a small handful of recruits like Metcalf or Taylor that everybody knows will pan out but they don't come around very often. Sort of like Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck in the NFL. But it seems like most years the #1 recruit is far from a sure thing and many years they don't end up performing much or at all better than the recruits we have already been getting. Again, sort of like the NFL where I could put together a long list of #1 draft choice QBs that don't end up amounting to much.

I didnt read the entire post, so sorry if i missed it.

I look at this another way - every year, there can only be 10 national champs, and as many as 40-50 top 10 athletes competing.

So this year, we had 30% of the national champs come from top 10 athletes. Another question might be to look at average finish of a top 10 recruit. What you fail to see in there is an athlete like Megaludis, who has finished 2,2,3. Pretty strong indicator of a top 10 athlete who hasnt won a title.

 

[TarpHawk]

The way I look at it, you can never be "damn sure" about anything. But you still have to make a bet. Either you make half bets on two guys or you make a full bet on one guy. If it were so crystal clear that one strategy worked 100% of the time and the other worked 0% of the time, we wouldn't need to debate it.

If you saw the movie or read the book Moneyball, it was about the rise of stats-based scouting in baseball. Stats won't tell you if player A will be more successful than player B, but they give you data with which to make a prediction, and over time, with a large sample, those small statistical differences become meaningful.

The reason I think it's important to have the conversation about full rides and making more bets on one guy vs. half bets on multiple guys is because, intuitively, getting two guys ranked #7 & 8 is as good as getting one guy ranked #1--one guy may get hurt or quit, one guy may become an NCAA champ, and at worst you're still likely to end up with a low AA. You've hedged your bets. Meanwhile, you have no margin for error with the guy ranked #1--is he Tsirtsis Sr or Tsirtsis Jr? Is he Stieber or Alton? Or is he Evans (highly ranked, finishes 6-6-6)? So there's nothing inherently bad about balanced recruiting--it makes perfect sense.

The non-intuitive factor is that 1st and 2nd place represent FAR more NCAA points than 7th & 8th. So there is a MUCH greater reward for nabbing a champ, even though there is far greater risk. Stieber generated 26.5 NCAA points this year; Burak generated 8.5. Iowa could have an entire lineup comprised of Evans and Buraks, and we'd end up with 87.5 points. That's a full team of 3XAAs (making an assumption about Burak), and we'd win every dual meet but come in 2nd-3rd-4th every year at NCAAs. We haven't gotten a top-10 recruit since Evans in 2010--he sort of panned out and sort of didn't--but he's a sample of 1.

The fact that Iowa hasn't scored 100 points in a long time is what's prompting the debate. We're not going to score 100 points next year either. It will be our 6th year without a team title. Penn State and Ohio State (and ASU) are clearly recruiting for champs. I think that's a smart strategy, because there's only 1 team champ every year, so to be #1 you have to take risks and make big bets. Ohio State and Penn State have won the past 5 team titles--likely to be #6 next year.

Am I sure I'm right? No. If it were so easy everyone would be team champs.

 

[sweatybetty]

Wondering here....did Iowa recruit Alex Dieringer?

What's the story there....great Wisconsin kid ( 3 timer) goes Okie...? That doesn't happen all that often, but to bypass both Iowa and Missouri?

 

[Old_wrestling_fan]

Originally posted by TarpHawk:
The way I look at it, you can never be "damn sure" about anything. But you still have to make a bet. Either you make half bets on two guys or you make a full bet on one guy. If it were so crystal clear that one strategy worked 100% of the time and the other worked 0% of the time, we wouldn't need to debate it.

If you saw the movie or read the book Moneyball, it was about the rise of stats-based scouting in baseball. Stats won't tell you if player A will be more successful than player B, but they give you data with which to make a prediction, and over time, with a large sample, those small statistical differences become meaningful.

The reason I think it's important to have the conversation about full rides and making more bets on one guy vs. half bets on multiple guys is because, intuitively, getting two guys ranked #7 & 8 is as good as getting one guy ranked #1--one guy may get hurt or quit, one guy may become an NCAA champ, and at worst you're still likely to end up with a low AA. You've hedged your bets. Meanwhile, you have no margin for error with the guy ranked #1--is he Tsirtsis Sr or Tsirtsis Jr? Is he Stieber or Alton? Or is he Evans (highly ranked, finishes 6-6-6)? So there's nothing inherently bad about balanced recruiting--it makes perfect sense.

The non-intuitive factor is that 1st and 2nd place represent FAR more NCAA points than 7th & 8th. So there is a MUCH greater reward for nabbing a champ, even though there is far greater risk. Stieber generated 26.5 NCAA points this year; Burak generated 8.5. Iowa could have an entire lineup comprised of Evans and Buraks, and we'd end up with 87.5 points. That's a full team of 3XAAs (making an assumption about Burak), and we'd win every dual meet but come in 2nd-3rd-4th every year at NCAAs. We haven't gotten a top-10 recruit since Evans in 2010--he sort of panned out and sort of didn't--but he's a sample of 1.

The fact that Iowa hasn't scored 100 points in a long time is what's prompting the debate. We're not going to score 100 points next year either. It will be our 6th year without a team title. Penn State and Ohio State (and ASU) are clearly recruiting for champs. I think that's a smart strategy, because there's only 1 team champ every year, so to be #1 you have to take risks and make big bets. Ohio State and Penn State have won the past 5 team titles--likely to be #6 next year.

Am I sure I'm right? No. If it were so easy everyone would be team champs.

Once again, I think Tarp nailed it here. If we accept that the Dan Gable era is over, and it is IMO, then we have to adapt to today's reality if we want to be an NCAA D1 championship team again. A darned good team, like Iowa's this year, that produces 5-8 AA's, but no champs, is not going to win very many, or any, team titles. That's just the way it works out with the points awarded for placing and advancing these days.

However we do it, and it isn't easy and there are no sure things, we have to get to where there are 2-3 really, really solid title threats and 2-3 more solid AA's to round things off. Someone posted a list of all of the wrestlers ranked from top to bottom based upon how many points they scored in the tourney this year...Iowa's first wrestler on that list was Clark, a finalist, but he showed up in about 20th place!! That right there tells you what you need to know IMO. Approximately 19 other wrestlers scored more points than our best guy.

If the delta between 1st place and say, sixth place at nationals was only a couple of points...then the "10 pretty good guys" composite would probably be the way to go. BUT...when we see each year now that the winning team has 2-3 finalist/champs, who are also bonus scorers...that should tell us something.

The "safe" way of bringing up 8-10 probable/likely "placers" each year will continue to yield finishes in the 3rd to 5th range IMO. The 2nd place that the Hawks earned this year was sort of a gift as Missouri and Minnesota did not wrestle a real good tourney or one or both of them would have likely placed ahead of us.

 

[Mountain Man Hawk]

Originally posted by Old_wr...ng_fan:

Originally posted by TarpHawk:
The way I look at it, you can never be "damn sure" about anything. But you still have to make a bet. Either you make half bets on two guys or you make a full bet on one guy. If it were so crystal clear that one strategy worked 100% of the time and the other worked 0% of the time, we wouldn't need to debate it.

If you saw the movie or read the book Moneyball, it was about the rise of stats-based scouting in baseball. Stats won't tell you if player A will be more successful than player B, but they give you data with which to make a prediction, and over time, with a large sample, those small statistical differences become meaningful.

The reason I think it's important to have the conversation about full rides and making more bets on one guy vs. half bets on multiple guys is because, intuitively, getting two guys ranked #7 & 8 is as good as getting one guy ranked #1--one guy may get hurt or quit, one guy may become an NCAA champ, and at worst you're still likely to end up with a low AA. You've hedged your bets. Meanwhile, you have no margin for error with the guy ranked #1--is he Tsirtsis Sr or Tsirtsis Jr? Is he Stieber or Alton? Or is he Evans (highly ranked, finishes 6-6-6)? So there's nothing inherently bad about balanced recruiting--it makes perfect sense.

The non-intuitive factor is that 1st and 2nd place represent FAR more NCAA points than 7th & 8th. So there is a MUCH greater reward for nabbing a champ, even though there is far greater risk. Stieber generated 26.5 NCAA points this year; Burak generated 8.5. Iowa could have an entire lineup comprised of Evans and Buraks, and we'd end up with 87.5 points. That's a full team of 3XAAs (making an assumption about Burak), and we'd win every dual meet but come in 2nd-3rd-4th every year at NCAAs. We haven't gotten a top-10 recruit since Evans in 2010--he sort of panned out and sort of didn't--but he's a sample of 1.

The fact that Iowa hasn't scored 100 points in a long time is what's prompting the debate. We're not going to score 100 points next year either. It will be our 6th year without a team title. Penn State and Ohio State (and ASU) are clearly recruiting for champs. I think that's a smart strategy, because there's only 1 team champ every year, so to be #1 you have to take risks and make big bets. Ohio State and Penn State have won the past 5 team titles--likely to be #6 next year.

Am I sure I'm right? No. If it were so easy everyone would be team champs.

Once again, I think Tarp nailed it here.  If we accept that the Dan Gable era is over, and it is IMO, then we have to adapt to today's reality if we want to be an NCAA D1 championship team again.  A darned good team, like Iowa's this year, that produces 5-8 AA's, but no champs, is not going to win very many, or any, team titles.  That's just the way it works out with the points awarded for placing and advancing these days.

However we do it, and it isn't easy and there are no sure things, we have to get to where there are 2-3 really, really solid title threats and 2-3 more solid AA's to round things off.  Someone posted a list of all of the wrestlers ranked from top to bottom based upon how many points they scored in the tourney this year...Iowa's first wrestler on that list was Clark, a finalist, but he showed up in about 20th place!!  That right there tells you what you need to know IMO.  Approximately 19 other wrestlers scored more points than our best guy.

If the delta between 1st place and say, sixth place at nationals was only a couple of points...then the "10 pretty good guys" composite would probably be the way to go.  BUT...when we see each year now that the winning team has 2-3 finalist/champs, who are also bonus scorers...that should tell us something.

The "safe" way of bringing up 8-10 probable/likely "placers" each year will continue to yield finishes in the 3rd to 5th range IMO.  The 2nd place that the Hawks earned this year was sort of a gift as Missouri and Minnesota did not wrestle a real good tourney or one or both of them would have likely placed ahead of us.

These are all good points. It would be a risky strategy but our current strategy hasn't been getting us any championships (and next year also looks unlikely) so maybe we have nothing to lose and might as well change. I know everyone seems excited about some of our incoming recruits but I remember everyone being excited about the recruiting class that just graduated too and we know how that worked out.
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