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That’s all rounding error relative to the virtual certainty that at least one of the Iowa/PSU starters won’t be healthy enough to score in March. Too hard to get 20 guys through unscathed, as dark as that sounds.I've referred to @smalls103 initial projections a few times and made a few key adjustments. He had Penn State up 131 to 114 on placement BUT the following considerations change things:
1. Kemerer IS coming back, that's +10.5 points. He had Kennedy at 8th (5.5) and Kemerer would be 2nd I imagine.
2. Berge and Dellavecchia are done. We lost all our 157 points and Young gets 3.5 more (moving from 8th to 6th) We lose 4.5. That's 8 points.
Those 2 things alone swing Iowa as the favorite again (128 to 126.5)
Now after that? There are probably 100 things both sides disagree with and 100 other things that can be adjusted. For example, we had all 4 champs start as #1, SVN as 5th, that's pretty rosy. But on the flip side, can Max Dean (Beard right now) get better than 8th? He's MUCH better at folk than free (example, he beat Bonaccorsi 6-0 in 2019 before beating MyMar) Can Kerkvliet jump Parris/Cass? Iowa has Bull at 5th (I don't think that's unfair at this point tbh) but I bet they disagree with that. Can they get a podium finish out of Murin/Assad?
Keep in mind, Iowa DID outbonus us last year (27 to 17). All that considered, without Suriano, Iowa is the favorite over us. We'd need to overachieve quite a bit.
Stuff happens at the tournament bottom line. I love the was @js8793 described Joe Lee the more I think about it. He can be a huge asset in the tournament if he's healthy. But very much he's boom or bust, bad weekend and he 0-2s .. good weekend and can he pull some kind of Pat McKee run?