An historic year for the BIG 10 as this year's tournament will be held for the first time in New Jersey, hosted by the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. I thought about writing one gigantic piece covering each weight class but then I thought it might be more fun to focus on each weight one by one.
Looking over 125 lbs it is clear as day that the forerunner for this year's title is Iowa's Spencer Lee . Finishing third as a freshman and second last season as a sophomore there's no reason he shouldn't easily bonus point his way through the tournament. He's completely dominated within the BIG 10 this year scoring four technical falls and one fall in six matches. His closest match has been with Michigan's Jack Medley, an 8-1 decision.
What isn't so clear is who will be the #2 seed. I'm going to guess most likely the answer here will be Purdue's Devin Schroder although an ugly 3-1 loss to Indiana's Liam Cronin makes it difficult to feel as justified in that decision as I would like to. Schroder defeated Illinois' Justin Cardani by a score of 3-0 but to the contrary Cardani has defeated Cronin on three occasions. 6-2, 6-4, 9-5. In the parity we call wrestling, I would think the head to head match up trumps the one loss verses three wins to a common opponent.
The rest of the bracket is a gigantic A beat B, B beat C, C beat A mess. Where to even begin?
Cronin has that standout victory over Schroder but he lost to Northwestern's Michael DeAugustino. Schroder majored DeAugustino 11-2. Not only that but DeAugustino lost to Rutger's Nicholas Aguilar and Cronin defeated him 4-2. Speaking of which Aguilar lost to Michigan's Jack Medley who has split matches with DeAgustino this season. Minnesota's Pat McKee fits in here somewhere although I'm not exactly sure where.
All I know is that at least in my opinion all four wrestlers mentioned above plus Wisconsin's Eric Barnett have all wrestled well enough this season to earn allocations.
As to a possible thief?
I wouldn't put it past Malik Heinselman of Ohio State to steal a spot from someone at this tournament. I'm actually surprised that he hasn't done better this season. I thought he would be better than the current 15-13 record he holds. A 7-3 victory over Medley shows that despite some hiccups earlier this year he does have the potential to wrestle well.
How I would personally seed?
#1 Spencer Lee junior Iowa
#2 Devin Schroder Sophomore Purdue
#3 Justin Cardani Freshman Illinois
#4 Jack Medley Freshman Michigan
#5 Liam Cronin Sophomore Indiana
#6 Nic Aguilar Freshman Rutgers
#7 Michael DeAugustino Freshman Northwestern
#8 Pat McKee Freshman Minnesota
#9 Eric Barnett Freshman Wisconsin
No matter how you seed 5-8, you're going to make someone angry. That's the beauty of the parity I mentioned earlier. This is a young weight class without a single senior, and plenty of freshmen. Looks to be a lot of fun within the upcoming years.
I said I thought that the BIG 10 would get 9 at this weight class and they ended up getting 8.
ReplyDeleteI included Cronin, they did not.