Our beloved Lions are in much better shape than you think! You say “How is this possible? The Hawks have sparkly unicorn dust flying out of their butts, according to the wrestling media.” Grab yourself a cold one, and read on.
TLDR – BIAS is rampant and you are at peak Hawk / trough Nittany Lions. Seeds will settle, Cael will have the team ready to go.
It is the heart of wrestling season! Is there any other better time of year (besides perhaps dry fly fishing season)? We can debate the green drake hatch on Penns against Kyle Conel’s pin of Kollin Moore but that is best done another day after the dust has settled, and not the sparkly unicorn dust. UFF has been busy, but he has sensed a disturbance in the Force. UFF is here to tell you to put on your big girl panties and quit worrying!
We are Penn State! Winners of 8 of the last 9. Who has 7 undefeated wrestlers right now (Note: It isn’t Iowa)? Did you not notice this?
Penn State may not win the title this year, but it is absolutely not settled now. IT IS LIKELY GOING TO BE CLOSE. The risk profile for Penn State is extremely asymmetric in a favorable way. The media and the hawk fans think the trophy is in the bag – they may have 6 champions (or more), set a new total points record, have 10 all-americans! If Penn State were to pull off the “upset”, would that not make Cael the greatest coach ever? Would it not make Brands a huge disappointment? Flo [those of the genius to put rankings behind a pay wall – can we say Dunning Kruger effect? The rankings aren’t even internally consistent. They have circular referenced themselves into ranking every Iowa wrestler top 8 no matter what they do. I guess if I was a huge Iowa fan it would be hard to be unbiased towards my team too – rant off] had Iowa ahead by 67 points this week. 67! Brands is very analogous to Harbaugh at Michigan (for those of you that are bisportual like me). He is good enough to not get fired, but not good enough to get Iowa back to the excellence that they once had. They truly were excellent. Things could continue to go perfect for them like it has (mostly) so far this season and they could set all those records like their fans are discussing on Hawkeye Report. But this is very unlikely.
SO HOW CAN PENN STATE PULL OFF THE UPSET? Okay, UFF is not crazy. UFF makes probabilistic dynamic simulation models for a living. I plugged the numbers into WrestleSim to see just what the hell is going on. According to Intermat:
Iowa – 1, 2, 6, 1, 6, 2, 2, 10, 4, 3 (pretty formidable stuff!)
Penn State – NR, 3, 2, NR, 4, 1, 1, 8, 20, NR (That’s some strong Swiss cheese)
Using these rankings puts Iowa at a 99.2% chance to win and PSU at 0.8%. This is if every wrestler performed like that seeded wrestler has performed before (i.e. they beat and lose to higher and lower seeded wrestlers with probabilities suggested by the historical data). There are a couple of problems with this 99.2/0.8 result.
1) Current rankings are not final seeds
2) Coaching/tournament prep differences
3) Bonus points/style
When you factor these things in, PSU is conceivably the favorite. I know, crazy right? I will post the details in different posts as this is already long. Enjoy!
And if my likes to posts ratio falls I will never post on BWI again
TLDR – BIAS is rampant and you are at peak Hawk / trough Nittany Lions. Seeds will settle, Cael will have the team ready to go.
It is the heart of wrestling season! Is there any other better time of year (besides perhaps dry fly fishing season)? We can debate the green drake hatch on Penns against Kyle Conel’s pin of Kollin Moore but that is best done another day after the dust has settled, and not the sparkly unicorn dust. UFF has been busy, but he has sensed a disturbance in the Force. UFF is here to tell you to put on your big girl panties and quit worrying!
We are Penn State! Winners of 8 of the last 9. Who has 7 undefeated wrestlers right now (Note: It isn’t Iowa)? Did you not notice this?
Penn State may not win the title this year, but it is absolutely not settled now. IT IS LIKELY GOING TO BE CLOSE. The risk profile for Penn State is extremely asymmetric in a favorable way. The media and the hawk fans think the trophy is in the bag – they may have 6 champions (or more), set a new total points record, have 10 all-americans! If Penn State were to pull off the “upset”, would that not make Cael the greatest coach ever? Would it not make Brands a huge disappointment? Flo [those of the genius to put rankings behind a pay wall – can we say Dunning Kruger effect? The rankings aren’t even internally consistent. They have circular referenced themselves into ranking every Iowa wrestler top 8 no matter what they do. I guess if I was a huge Iowa fan it would be hard to be unbiased towards my team too – rant off] had Iowa ahead by 67 points this week. 67! Brands is very analogous to Harbaugh at Michigan (for those of you that are bisportual like me). He is good enough to not get fired, but not good enough to get Iowa back to the excellence that they once had. They truly were excellent. Things could continue to go perfect for them like it has (mostly) so far this season and they could set all those records like their fans are discussing on Hawkeye Report. But this is very unlikely.
SO HOW CAN PENN STATE PULL OFF THE UPSET? Okay, UFF is not crazy. UFF makes probabilistic dynamic simulation models for a living. I plugged the numbers into WrestleSim to see just what the hell is going on. According to Intermat:
Iowa – 1, 2, 6, 1, 6, 2, 2, 10, 4, 3 (pretty formidable stuff!)
Penn State – NR, 3, 2, NR, 4, 1, 1, 8, 20, NR (That’s some strong Swiss cheese)
Using these rankings puts Iowa at a 99.2% chance to win and PSU at 0.8%. This is if every wrestler performed like that seeded wrestler has performed before (i.e. they beat and lose to higher and lower seeded wrestlers with probabilities suggested by the historical data). There are a couple of problems with this 99.2/0.8 result.
1) Current rankings are not final seeds
2) Coaching/tournament prep differences
3) Bonus points/style
When you factor these things in, PSU is conceivably the favorite. I know, crazy right? I will post the details in different posts as this is already long. Enjoy!
And if my likes to posts ratio falls I will never post on BWI again
