In the final dual edition of the season "By The Numbers" breaks down the NWCA Dual Championship between the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

Takedowns

PSU: 23
OSU: 14

Penn State won the takedown battle decisively, but Jason Nolf put up 10 of the Nittany Lion takedowns. I have learned throughout the season that takedown stats for the dual tell a lot of the story, but it is often exaggerated by one performance.

Committed Attacks

PSU: 60
OSU: 50

The one thing that caught me off guard here was the amount of attacks the outmatched wrestlers were taking in this dual meet. Throughout the season in dual and tournament finals the dominating wrestler has had a significant advantage in the number of committed attacks. This wasn’t the case even for Jason Nolf and Alex Dieringer.

In Dieringer’s case he scored a lot of nearfall to close the match out early and didn’t spend a lot of time on his feet. Ryan Blees didn’t want to be a sitting duck for the attack hungry, Jason Nolf. He took a decent amount of attacks despite being outclassed.

When duals roll around next year I will definitely be putting in a success rate percentage to go along with committed attacks. Usually a high conversion rates allows the wrestler to take many attacks, or do a lot of attacks lead to a higher conversion rate.  A little chicken or the egg scenario. I have an idea from tracking some of the prolific scorers this season, but I want to gather more evidence.

Reversals

PSU: 3
OSU: 0

The number of reversals is high for a college dual meet. However, the real story is the reversals were the bottom man’s action and not top wrestlers getting over aggressive. Megaludis, Gulibon, and Johnson all used their own action to score the reversals.

Nearfall

PSU: 1 set of 2, 3 sets of 4
OSU: 3 sets of 4

The four nearfall points have created more bonus points in dual meets throughout the year. I would have to guess the percentage of technical falls is up this year, but I don’t have any of the data available to present. This will be interesting to track at the NCAA tournament, where bonus points have been a big factor in several of the team races over the past decade.

Out of Bounds

PSU: 2 both stalling
OSU: 0
Top/Bottom: 9

There were only 11 stoppages for the action going out of bounds, and only two of those were from the neutral position. This was the intended effect of the rule change. It is apparent Oklahoma State has adjusted their wrestling from the beginning of the season. In Kinnick Stadium against the Iowa Hawkeyes they went out of bounds seven times in the neutral position and were called for stalling on five of those boundary violations.

The rule still has way too much gray area, but this dual was a good example of the benefits it could have. The wrestling stayed on the mat and bouts weren’t drawn out by constant breaks in the action.

Riding Time

PSU: 1
OSU: 2

This is a little misleading because riding points are only awarded at the completion of a seven-minute match. Megaludis, Nolf, and McIntosh probably would have earned the point as well as Dieringer for the Cowboys.

Penn State dominated this match, but it doesn’t show up that way in the categories I breakdown. Sure they had a takedown edge, but the dominance that you don’t see is the six-point wins. Penn State secured three falls, to Oklahoma State’s one injury default.

I know what you’re thinking, “He hasn’t complained about, or pointed out an officiating mistake yet. He can’t end the article,” I won’t disappoint you if you were in that group. The Nico Megaludis fall from the neutral position had Eddie Klimara and many Cowboy fans shaking their heads. They had a good reason to be shaking their heads.

This one is pretty black and white, but the camera angle leaves just a little guesswork. I did slow the clip down, but timestamped it for you to decide if this action met the criteria for a fall.