The 2019 NCAA tournament brackets have arrived and, well, we're jut a bit perplexed. First of all, if you haven't seen the brackets, go over to FloArena and take them in. Then head to Home Depot and get some sheet rock to fix the holes you just punched in your living room wall.

We lost our minds on the bracket breakdown show immediately after they came out, but now we're going to take a more measured approach and go through everything. Well, we would, but the NCAA hasn't released the coaches rank and RPI, so we're guessing on a lot of these.

As such, we're going to do our best to guess where the coaches ranked people, because honestly, I really don't think the seeding committee changed all that much from what the seeding matrix spit out. I think the coaches did a poor job coming up with some, not all, of these rankings. I also think the committee was largely hamstrung by the way placement below first in conference tournaments is treated in the formula.

And why are coaches even doing this in the first place? Let's be clear, these guys are unable to remove bias where it could benefit their team or their conference. Not only that, but they call in favors all the time with their friends in the coaching community. But beyond all that, they don't have time to do them!

Picture this, your conference tournament ends late on Sunday night. You've got to get all your guys on a plane or a bus home, deal with all the injuries and losses and mental wear and tear of conference weekend; you're exhausted. Now, instead of spending 6+ hours working on your team, you have to catch up with all the completely absurd results of conference weekend, and make very difficult judgement calls on guys forfeiting out of conference tournaments and losing to guys they clearly have better resumes then. How do you suppose that's gonna go?

On to the seeds and what went right and what went wrong.

125 Pounds

They got this one right. Like, so right that I'm a little concerned everyone involved spent so much time on it that it hurt their ability to get the next few weight classes right. But I will bring up one thing.

I made no bones about the fact that Rivera should be the 1 seed. I think he earned it based on beating Spencer Lee (twice) and facing a tough enough schedule that his quality win points were about a dozen ahead of the next closest guy and having the best RPI (despite not wrestling a Big Ten starter for a month straight!). But the hullaballoo at 165 with Joe Smith made me think, for those arguing Joe should get credit for his win over David McFadden at 174, do they also feel Rivera should get dinged for his loss to Stevan Micic while bumping up? I think not, but it is an interesting point when thinking about how the Oklahoma State weight changes really screwed things up at 165 and 174.

The second thing, and I don't know how to avoid this, but the early season rankings and timing of matches do in fact matter. Rivera was ranked higher than Picc to start the year because he placed at NCAAs in 2018 but the Cowboy did not. And he beat Spencer in December as opposed to February. I still think Rivera clearly deserves the one, but just food for thought going forward.

133 Pounds

Now we get into the grey areas. Again, we don't have the coaches rank (not ideal), but the only way Micic comes out ahead of Suriano in the seeding matrix, even with a head-to-head win, is if he was ranked higher by the coaches. Micic has been hurt since before the season, when he couldn't wrestle at the world championships, so Michigan head coach Sean Bormet and his staff should absolutely do whatever will get Micic to NCAAs the healthiest, this much is not in dispute.

What is disputed is the precedent it sets, and it started a couple years ago with Nick Suriano, continuing last year with Jason Nolf and Michael Kemerer. Micic had a win over Suriano, but by forfeiting out he denied Suriano a chance at avenging the loss. CP drew a parallel on the bracket reaction show by saying that, in retrospect, DeSanto should have med forfeited once he made the semis as well, and not afforded Suriano the opportunity to get revenge. That likely could have made DeSanto the three seed instead of the seven.

There are two ways this "issue" can "be fixed." One is for the coaches who do the rankings to take a stand and make it their priority to punish guys who don't finish their conference tournament. The other, probably more calamitous choice, is for the NCAA to make med forfeits count as losses and/or impose a rule that you cannot get a seed higher than your conference finish.

141 Pounds

The top three was about as easy as any weight, which is very kind of Yianni, Joey McKenna, and Nick Lee. I disagree with Eierman being the five seed, though he did lose to the four seed Alber, who complicated matters by losing to Chris Sandoval and placing third at his conference tournament. But that is hardly the issue at this weight.

How in God's name does Mikey Carr of Illinois get the six seed after placing eighth at Big Tens? Remove the name and singlet and just repeat that in your head: a wrestler placed eighth in his CONFERENCE and got the six seed NATIONALLY... what? There's no question that 141 is a mess below that, and I should point out he beat seven seed Mitch McKee and eight seed Kanen Storr. Also, Carr med forfeited out of CKLV, which included not wrestling nine seed and Big 12 champ Dom Demas. Med forfeits aren't just something to be looked at as it pertains to conference weekend.

But the fact of the matter is, they need to examine how conference finish is looked at as it pertains to the seeding matrix. A summation of how that works: A conference champ vs a conference champ is a wash. Someone who finishes ahead of someone else in their conference wins the 10 points of the seeding matrix battle, which is good. But the real issue is that a Big 12 or EIWA runner-up is looked at the same as a Big Ten eighth placer.

Which again gets back to the point above, why would the coaches not drop Carr further based on his conference performance? There should definitely be leeway to allow a little bit of padding if you underperform on the second to last weekend of the year. But that's if you're say, a two seed who finishes third at your conference (a la Alber). Not if you finished seven spots below your seed!

149 Pounds

Not a lot to complain about here. Kolodzik hurt himself bigly by losing to Parker Kropman in the last dual of the year and then to Jared Prince in the EIWA semis, so his five seed is pretty justified. Good job, coaches and committee!

157 Pounds

To this point, the crazy situations are at least justifiable. While Carr getting eighth at B1Gs and a six seed is strange, the guys below him did not necessarily have stellar seasons to indisputably justify being ahead of him. Additionally, all the guys he lost to at Big Tens were guys he beat during the regular season, so instead of having a H2H over those guys, he splits with them in the seeding matrix. Which is why the Micic and Shakur Rasheed situations are so frustrating, losing a second H2H means you had to in fact wrestle that person not just once, but twice.

Which brings us back to 157 and Alec Pantaleo. On one hand, he didn't even earn an automatic allocation for his conference heading into last weekend. On the other hand, he JUST handled Ryan Deakin and wound up seeded below him. So the question becomes: how much should timing matter as it pertains to splitting wins?

Because honestly, Deakin had a better season than Pantaleo. But Alber somehow got a four seed, despite entering conference weekend as the #7 ranked guy in the coaches poll AND then not winning Big 12s, in large part because he beat Jaydin Eierman. It's not always this cut and dry, even in the situation I am directly speaking of, but it understandably leaves a bad taste in people's mouths when someone gets beat and then a week later is seeded ahead of the person they just lost to.

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165 Pounds

Alright, I got a bone to pick with this one. I need it explained to me how someone who has a H2H win and started conference weekend ranked higher by the coaches and with a better RPI can now be seeded below the person they beat? Because that is exactly what happened with Evan Wick and Josh Shields.

Yes, Wick lost to Logan Massa, who Shields beat. But Massa also lost to Demetrius Romero and Isaiah White (and Cenzo twice), so they had to punish Wick badly for getting fourth in his conference. Which certainly seems consistent with the rest of the seeds... eye roll.

Beyond that, the pure absurdity of Marinelli's draw, it's lunacy. Two-time AA Joe Smith got drawn into the pigtail that sees him facing Marinelli in the Round of 32, then he gets Jon Viruet in the Round of 16, who took Marinelli to overtime at Midlands. Then, he gets Mekhi Lewis in the quarters, who beat Marinelli (controversially) at Junior World Team Trials. He follows that with Wick in the semis, and we've talked plenty about how those two match up. It's not necessarily wrong, but man, it sure seems like the most unlucky draw I've ever seen for a one seed.

174 Pounds

Even with Jacobe Smith coming back down from 184, this was an easy weight to seed given how many of the top guys wrestled each other during the year. The wrestlers made the coaches and committee's job easy, and they kindly followed suit. Good job on everyone all around.

184 Pounds

Here we go. By the seeding matrix, Shakur rightfully got the two. But the circumstances that led to him getting the two were wholly frustrating. 

First of all, much like 141 and 157, this weight was a nightmare to rank all year. At one point we even made a joke on FRL that no one wanted to be #2. And to Shakur's credit, while he missed six conference duals and didn't wrestle in the conference finals, he did win the Scuffle, a tournament that three seed Zack Zavatsky did not show up to.

But this started sometime in the middle of the year when other ranking services (not Flo) made Shakur the two seed because... he hadn't lost, I guess. But it certainly is easier to not lose when you don't wrestle against Taylor Venz, Emery Parker, or Myles Martin. And even still, Shakur had just two wins against the Top-16 seeds, while Zavatsky had six. Also, the good people at WrestleStat have their RPI projections and show Rasheed ahead of Zavatsky there, which makes zero sense to me. I normally don't complain about RPI, but this is one instance that if true looks very bad on paper.

Ultimately, Rasheed should never have been the two seed at Big Tens, and should have had to wrestle Myles Martin in the semis (or not, had he lost to Venz, or Parker, or Wilcke). Rasheed also could beat all those guys! Though the staff may have had him forfeit out, in which case he would have lower conference placing than all those guys. Just an odd situation.

197 Pounds

In my opinion, there is no more egregious singular seed over another seed than Preston Weigel getting the three seed over Pat Brucki, and the only way for it to happen is for the coaches to change their ranking at the 11th hour.

Going into conference weekend, Brucki was third in both the coaches rank and RPI, so with no head-to-head between the two, all Brucki had to do was win his conference to be opposite Bo Nickal, right? Wrong. He won EIWAs, avenging his only loss of the year, while Weigel blitzed through Big 12s and did not give up a single point.

But with no advantage in common opponent, or conference finish, Weigel got a bump for being undefeated and, not giving up a point in Tulsa I suppose. Along with 165, it just seems like a very strange movement in the CR, and in his case, all Brucki did was avenge his only loss. Oh, and he has twice as many wins over qualifiers as Weigel, so even with wins over Willie Miklus and Jacob Warner the Cowboy might come out behind in quality win points. Not a fan of what the coaches did her at all.

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285 Pounds

Simply put, Derek White and Anthony Cassar had a 50/50 split to claim the top seed. It appears they went with the least messy route, which is, the guy who didn't win his conference (Gable Steveson) is three, so that makes the conference champs 1 and 2. Well, that means White goes ahead of Cassar based on head-to-head. I made that exact case on FRL 359 before conference weekend, and it matched with how seeding went.

But the biggest head scratcher, more so than Shields over Wick and Weigel over Brucki, is Mason Parris getting the five seed after only getting seventh at Big Tens. Now, weird quirks such as a sixth placer in a conference always having more losses at that event than the seventh placer, but man, what the heck happened here?

First of all, this is the weight, moreso than any other, that they have to show the final coaches rank and RPI numbers, because it's not clear what happened. At the other weights, it's clear what happened, and people (not just me) disagree with it, but it's clear how it went down. Here, we're all left scratching our heads.

Second of all, it's just weird. Yes, Parris beat 6-seed Dhesi and 7-seed Hillger. But he was 0-3 against #12 Conan Jennings, split with #9 Matt Stencel (losing the more recent one), and lost to #17 David Jensen. He did beat #10 Youssif Hemida twice, so his good wins are good, but it really just seems like any coach should really have him behind Jennings in their poll. I suppose that's what happens when you walk into conference weekend fifth in both CR and RPI, but once again, we really need to examine how conference finish is treated, both by coaches generally and the seeding matrix specifically.

But you know what. Parris being the five is, in my opinion, actually a result of a poor ranking of Amar Dhesi. CP pointed out his resume on twitter, but we also helped coaches justify their own position on Dhesi by having him fourth in our final heavyweight ranking of the year. And it wasn't just us, three other rankers had him fourth, as well.

I am going to read to you the NCAA qualifiers the 6 SEED Amar Dhesi beat:
You ready?

You're sure?

*deep breath* ok.

#25 Haydn Maley, #14 AJ Nevills, #19 Brian Andrews.

Lost to Mason Parris who is 0-For-Conan and 7th at conference.

— Christian Pyles (@CPyles8) March 14, 2019

We played ourselves here folks. Let's be the change we want to see in the world. Dhesi's resume this season did not merit a #4 ranking and was entirely based off being the highest returning All-American. In order for the coaches, who let's be serious look at the various national rankings before putting pen to paper, to be held accountable, we must hold ourselves accountable. And if we want the media to take over the final poll that determines NCAA seeding, we cannot allow guys to have resumes like this, to miss a half dozen duals, and to forfeit out of conference weekend, to be high in the rankings. The change starts from within.