Takedowns

Winners: 23
Losers: 2

When looking at the CKLV and Southern Scuffle finals there has been a staggering advantage in the neutral position for the winning wrestlers. These are two of the toughest collegiate tournaments in the country, and the winners are decisively separating themselves from the field. In those 20 bouts the winners have a takedown advantage of 47 to 5.

Dean Heil is the only wrestler to win the match without a takedown. Even though he didnÂ’t score a takedown, he didnÂ’t give one up either. The very top folkstyle wrestlers are dominant in the neutral position. This is where the matches are won.

Committed Attacks

Winners: 59
Losers: 40

The story here isnÂ’t the number of committed attacks, but the takedown conversion rate of the winning wrestlers. They scored on 23 of 59 committed attacks. That is a 39% success rate. In contrast, the losing wrestlers converted only 2 takedowns out of 40 attempts for a 5% conversion rate.

The winning wrestlers are winning the battle of set-ups and finishes both offensively and defensively. The better wrestlers and can score off a high percentage of shots, so it makes sense that those wrestlers would be attacking more.

Reversals

Winners: 1
Losers: 0

At some point I will come to grips with the lack of reversals in NCAA wrestling. I am not there yet. Zain Retherford scored the only reversal of the championship finals. The next step here is breaking the escapes down to see if there was a chance to chase a reversal. Are reversals not happening because the top wrestlers are recognizing danger, or are bottom wrestlers not pursuing them?

Nearfall

Winners: 2 x 2, 2 x 4
Losers: 0

Both wrestlers to score nearfall blew the matches wide open. Zain Retherford punished Evan Henderson with a hammerlock and power half for several sets of nearfall. The four-point nearfall has been a major change and very beneficial for excellent to wrestlers. Remember when Zain was criticized for hanging on top? He showed in the Scuffle finals that is a thing of the past and four-point nearfalls are going to help lead him to significant bonus points.

Nahshon Garrett was the other wrestler to score nearfall. This was the second time in major final that Garrett used a cross wrist tilt. He scored four on Cody Brewer to get himself out of a major hole at CKLV. His lone set of two nearfall contributed to a major decision win.

Riding Time

Winners: 5
Losers: 0

Out of Bounds

30 times

Stall calls from going out of bounds are new to NCAA wrestling this year. There has been a ton of controversy starting with the rules interpretation videos. Most people thought that it was going to be difficult for the officials to call, and those people havenÂ’t been let down. The upside to the rule is that it has kept action in bounds. There were only three stoppages per bout. 125lbs and 184lbs skewed that number with 16 stoppages in the two matches.

The stoppages in those two matches were dramatically different. Seven out of 10 stoppages at 125lbs came when the wrestlers were in the top/bottom position. You very rarely see any stall calls from this situation, and that was the case in the 125lb final.

All of the stoppages at 184lbs came from the neutral position. The calls here left a lot of people scratching their heads. See if you can make sense of themÂ….

First Score 

Winners: 9
Losers: 1

I haven’t included this stat since the inaugural edition of “By The Numbers.” Mainly because it is a cliche, irrelevant stat. I brought it back this week because I am starting to get enough data compiled to prove that. In the finals of the Southern Scuffle and CKLV the winning wrestlers have a takedown advantage of 47 to 5. Can you start to see why the first score stat doesn’t mean much? When you start in the neutral position and score a takedown first it doesn’t make that initial takedown anymore important that any other point scored in the bout. It just shows the better wrestler scores takedowns in the high level finals almost at a 10:1 rate. The better wrestlers score more takedowns, period. This stat might be important at the elementary level when the competitors have a fragile psyche, but leave it in the elementary gyms.

Nate Brown was the only wrestler to lose after scoring the opening point. He scored an escape to start the second period. Dean Heil and Morgan McIntosh also opened the scoring in the second period with escapes. Heil won a tiebreaker match where a takedown wasnÂ’t scored. McIntosh scored the decisive takedown in his bout in the third period. The first takedown normally shows who the better wrestler is because the better wrestler scores more takedowns. Stop citing this stat.