It's the most wonderful time of the year! March Matness! Tourney Time! And whereas our NCAA basketball brethren most make due with one puny bracket, we of the wrestling community celebrate with ten beautiful double elimination brackets.

For more NCAA content, check this out. There is an absurd amount. I couldn't possibly list it all, just click and start browsing. 

And here are those wonderful brackets for your perusal before we properly dig into the 133-pound division. 

Just scroll through in the window below, they're all there!

The NCAA Championship 133-Pound bracket is headlined by two seventh-year seniors and one redshirt freshman challenger. We'll talk about that trio below, followed by other contenders, sleepers and landmines, then cap things off with some humble predictions. 

Seeds are in parentheses after each wrestler's school. Rankings are from the latest national top 33. 

Favorites

#1 Ryan Crookham, Lehigh (2)

#2 Vito Arujau, Cornell (6) 

#3 Daton Fix, Oklahoma State (1)

Daton Fix is the prototypical Oklahoma State Cowboy. Originally from Sand Springs, Oklahoma, Fix stayed in his home state throughout his collegiate career, one that began with a redshirt season 2017-18 season. 

Daton has been a fixture (sorry, couldn't help myself) on both the national and international scene since his high school days. A full list of his accolades would take up this entire preview but some highlights include: five-time Big 12 champ; four-time NCAA All-American, three-time NCAA finalist, three-time U20 world medalist, two-time senior world team medalist, 2017 U20 world gold medalist, and 2021 senior world gold medalist. And those are just the highlights!

This season Fix has been a perfect 17-0 en route to earning the number one seed. He's rarely been challenged all season long, with his closest match being when he bumped up to 141 and defeated Missouri's 14th-ranked Josh Edmond. 

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Fix's only losses in his career at the NCAA Championships were to Nick Suriano in the finals, to Roman Bravo-Young in the finals twice, to eventual champ Vito Arujau in the semis, and to Michael Mcgee in the third-place bout. Could this be his year Fix finally summits the top of the podium? He'll have the substantial Cowboy community plus many others cheering him on in Kansas City. 

The aforementioned Vito Arujau will be a fellow favorite. Though only the sixth seed, Vito is coming off one of the most impressive years of competition of any American wrestler ever. Originally from Syosset, New York on Long Island, Vito deferred eligibility in his first year out of college, then took fourth in 2019. He deferred eligibility for two more seasons after that (thanks to the stupid novel coronavirus), then took third in 2022. 

2023 was Vito's annus mirabilis. He blitzed through the EIWA, then won the most loaded bracket at the 2023 NCAAs, beating both Daton Fix and Roman Bravo-Young by significant margins. 

Arujau then deftly switched to freestyle, winning the US Open over Austin DeSanto, then triumphing in Final X over fellow Cornell national champ Nahshon Garrett. 

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Next stop was Belgrade, Serbia, where he once again wrestled his way to the top of the podium, matching the highest finish of his father, Vugar Orujov, who won a 1991 world gold competing for the Soviet Union. 

You may remember learning about all this from such hits as Vito: Out of the Shadows. 

Then there is local Lehigh Valley product and redshirt freshman Ryan Crookham, competing for his hometown team, the Lehigh Mountain Hawks. Crookham was one of the top recruits in the high school Class of 2022. 

Crookham has since burst on to the D1 scene when he defeated Vito in the Journeymen Classic 8-4 in November of 2023. That catapulted Crookham into the number one spot in the polls, as Crookham>Vito>Fix, at least that went the ranker's logic. 

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Crookham followed that up with an undefeated season and a second win over Arujau in the EIWA finals, this time by the score of 10-6. 

Those two losses, plus a lack of a full season, dropped Vito all the way to the #6 seed, but there are rules for seeding, and a matrix that must be followed. And these rules put Vito and Crookham on the same side of the bracket, setting up a potential round three in the semifinals, though they'll both have to get by a host of worthy contenders first. 

Contenders

#4 Dylan Shawver, Rutgers (4)

#5 Dylan Ragusin, Michigan (5)

#6 Kai Orine, NC State (3)

#7 Nasir Bailey, Little Rock (7)

#8 Aaron Nagao, Penn State (10)

#9 Evan Frost, Iowa State (8)

#10 Jacob Van Dee, Nebraska (14)

#11 Brody Teske, Iowa (15)

#12 Nic Bouzakis, Ohio State (16)

#13 Sam Latona, Virginia Tech (12)

#15 Dominick Serrano, Northern Colorado (9)

There is a vast array of talent outside the top 3 in this bracket. Two of the next toughest contenders are pair of Dylans, Shawver and Ragusin. The Dyalns have wrestled thrice already this season, Ragusin winning at Midlands and the dual meet, while Shawver got the dub in the Big Tens finals. That gave Shawver the first Big Ten title for the Scarlet Knights since Anthony Ashnault in 2019. 

Few wrestlers are entering the tournament on a hotter streak than, Shawver who vanquished Ragusin in the B1G finals via tech-fall. Shawver and Ragusin could potentially see each other two more times at the NCAAs, which would continue what has rapidly become one of the best rivalries in college. 

Wolfpacker Kai Orine is not to be overlooked either, as the Missouri native earned the #3 seed thanks to a stellar season, including a win over Evan Frost in the CKLV finals. This is Orine's fifth season on the campus of NC State.

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Injecting some youthful vibrancy into the bracket is Little Rock's true freshman phenom Nasir Bailey, who is helping write history for the Arkansas program which has barely existed for half a decade. 

Four other Big Ten hammers in Nagao, Van Dee, Teske, and Bouzakis will also be contenders. Teske has come on strong late in the season, while Nagao slightly slipped in the rankings partly due to a low match count. 

Van Dee and Bouzakis, both freshmen, are going in opposite directions, as Van Dee had an excellent Big Ten tournament whereas Bouzakis would sooner forget his 1-2 performance in College Park. 

Louisiana's own Evan Frost will look to make some waves in Kansas City in his first varsity season at Iowa State. Sam Latona, the veteran from Alabama, will look to get back on the podium for the third time and notch another accolade for Southern wrestlers. Dom Serrano of North Colorado rounds out our coterie of contenders. 

Sleepers & Landmines

#17 Julian Chlebove, Arizona State (24)

#32 Maximilian Leete, American (31)

#33 Gable Strickland, Lock Haven (27)

Chlebove, the Sun Devil by way of eastern Pennsylvania, is far more dangerous than his #24 seed would imply.

Leete gave his EIWA opponents, including Arujau, difficult matches in both victory and defeat. He will be a tough out no matter who he matches up against. And Strickland is a MAC champ looking to prove himself in a loaded field. 

Potential Matchups to Watch

#14 Braxton brown and #12 Nic Bouzakis is an insanely good first-round bout between two Big Ten rivals. Below them in the bracket is #15 Dom Serrano vs #17 Julian Chlebove, which is another ridiculously good round 1 bout. They're all in the top quarter of the bracket, so they have Daton Fix to look forward to if they make it that far. 

#7 Nasir Bailey and #8 Aaron Nagao could see each other in the second round, which is silly. That bottom quarter is crazy deep, as it contains Nasir, Nagao,Teske, and Crookham. Assuming those four make the second round, one of them is going to lose in the round of 16 and not even make the bloodround. That's bonkers. 

Predictions

1) Daton Fix, Oklahoma State

2) Ryan Crookham, Lehigh

3) Vito Arujau, Cornell

4) Dylan Shawver, Rutgers

5) Dylan Ragusin, Michigan

6) Kai Orine, NC State

7) Nasir Bailey, Little Rock

8) Evan Frost, Iowa State

R12) Aaron Nagao, Penn State

R12) Jacob Van Dee, Nebraska

R12) Sam Latona, Virginia Tech

R12) Nick Bouzakis, Ohio State

I'm doing my best to pick with my head and not my heart. Fix's body of work and success this season is all the evidence I need to forecast his first NCAA title in his final year of eligibility. That such an objectively reasoned prediction happens to line up with what I would personally like to see is a coincidence. At least that's what I'm telling myself. 

I contemplated -- but only briefly -- penciling in Vito for a semi-slide, i.e. making the semifinals and then losing his next three matches to finish sixth, based on the premise that he is not 100% healthy. But the last time I did something like that, Cory Clark embarrassed me and won a title, so I'm splitting the difference and writing him in for third, with Crookham winning in round three of their collegiate series in the semis. 

I'm also picking Shawver to win in the quarters over Ragusin, although obviously Ragusin has the ability to beat Shawver, something he's done twice already this season. 

The consolation round will be a bloodbath, and it's tough to have much confidence in any picks when they will inevitably entail predicting that so many talented wrestlers will take losses. But that's how brackets work! And that's what I came up with. Now it's up to the athletes to make a fool of me by proving me woefully incorrect!