As we always do at this time, we have begun our projected seeding for the upcoming Big Ten championships at Rutgers. I will do one every weekday, continuing here with 157 pounds.

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The seeding rules changed once again this year. In 2019, they seeded all 14 guys if a weight had eight or more automatic qualifier allocations. This year, they are seeding every entry at all 10 weights no matter what the allocations look like.

This weight class has a few guys who have missed the majority of the season with injuries that will make this one difficult to seed, plus a tricky injury default to consider.

Seed Projections: 125 | 133 | 141 | 149

Projected 157 Seeds

1. Ryan Deakin, Northwestern
2. Kaleb Young, Iowa
3. Kendall Coleman, Purdue
4. Will Lewan, Michigan
5. Ryan Thomas, Minnesota
6. Jake Tucker, Michigan State
7. Peyton Robb, Nebraska
8. Eric Barone, Illinois
9. Jahi Jones, Maryland
10. Mike Van Brill, Rutgers
11. Fernie Silva, Indiana
12. Garrett Model, Wisconsin
13. Quinn Kinner, Ohio State
14. Brady Berge, Penn State

We’ve been using our national rankings for any tiebreakers, so Ryan Deakin gets the one seed over Kaleb Young after both finished undefeated against conference foes. However, Young beat Deakin the past two times they wrestled (at NCAAs last season), has a better resume in conference, and won Midlands which Deakin did not compete at.

Kendall Coleman beat Will Lewan at the Michigan State Open and also defeated Ryan Thomas in the dual. What could hurt him is the injury default against Peyton Robb, so we’ll see if the coaches handle that any differently than they handle the DeSanto/RBY injury default.

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Lewan has wins over Thomas, Jake Tucker, Robb, and Mike Van Brill. Thomas wrestled backups against Penn State and Ohio State but beat Tucker in the dual on January 17, so that makes for a pretty clean 4-5-6 in this bracket.

Tucker beat Peyton Robb on January 26, and the Husker otherwise lost to Lewan and Young, though he does have that aforementioned injury default win against Kendall Coleman. Next we’re going with Eric Barone, who beat Jahi Jones and Mike Van Brill, and his loss to Elijah Cleary may not come into play since it looks like Quinn Kinner will be the guy for the Buckeyes.

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Kinner and Penn State's Brady Berge are going to be the most difficult guys to seed. Berge is 1-1 on the whole this year, 0-1 in Big Ten matches, losing to Kinner on Saturday night. He wasn't a 157 last year, and finishing in the Round of 16 at 149 shouldn't factor in, and if it does, shouldn't be enough to put him up very high. Meanwhile, Kinner only has wins over backups and Berge.

The bottom six is a mess even beyond those two. Jahi Jones lost to Bo Pipher, but beat Van Brill and Fernie Silva. Van Brill beat Pipher, Silva, and Cleary as mentioned above. Silva's only got a win over Drew Scharenbrock, but it could be Garrett Model who goes for Wisconsin. Model only beat Pipher.

Anyone who can accurately predict a) who will be the starter for the bottom six come conference tournament time AND b) correctly guess where they will be seeded, hats off to you my friend.