One of the single most important days on the NCAA wrestling calendar is when the automatic qualifier allocations are announced for the conference tournaments. Those are scheduled to be released on February 27, but today we bring you our predictions for how many each conference will automatically qualify at each weight.

If you're new to this, it's pretty simple: once the regular season ends, a formula is used to determine how many spots each conference is granted, per weight, to send to the national tournament. This year's NCAA tournament is in Minneapolis, and will feature 330 wrestlers, as always.

Some of those wrestlers will be granted "wildcard" selections, what's known as an at-large bid. We'll get to those in a later article, but right now we're focusing on auto qualifiers. Based on who teams enter in their respective conference tournaments, three metrics are used to determine how many spots are granted: Coaches Rank, RPI, and winning percentage.

It's a lot to explain in one article, but here are some helpful links to read if you'd like to know more about the process. But the long and short of it is that you have to meet two of the following criteria: be top-33 in the coaches rank, top-33 in the RPI, or have a winning percentage above .700 against Division I opponents, with some potential to slide those numbers up or down to fit the weight class.

Each weight class will have a maximum of 29 automatic qualifiers spread across the eight conferences, but must have a minimum of at least 25. Looking at the last two years, no weight had fewer than 27; in 2017 there were two weights with 26, and in 2016 every weight had at least 28 auto qualifiers. If you win your conference, you are automatically granted a spot in NCAAs, which in some cases is the only spot guaranteed for your conference.

On to the predictions, which are based in large part on the last RPI and Coaches Rank from two weeks ago, along with current win percentage numbers as well as some old-fashioned guesswork. The hardest thing with these is determining who will start for some teams and how RPI gets impacted once a few guys get their 15 matches.

125 Pounds

• Big Ten: 8
• Big 12: 4
• ACC: 3
• EIWA: 6
• MAC: 3
• Pac-12: 2
• SoCon: 1
• Total: 27

133 Pounds

• Big Ten: 7
• Big 12: 7
• ACC: 5
• MAC: 4
• EIWA: 2
• Pac-12: 1
• SoCon: 2
• Total: 28

141 Pounds

• Big Ten: 8
• Big 12: 5
• ACC: 3
• EIWA: 5
• MAC: 5
• Pac-12: 2
• SoCon: 1
• Total: 29

149 Pounds

• Big Ten: 10
• Big 12: 5
• ACC: 2
• EIWA: 5
• MAC: 4
• Pac-12: 1
• SoCon: 2
• Total: 29

157 Pounds

• Big Ten: 6
• Big 12: 5
• ACC: 5
• EIWA: 4
• MAC: 6
• Pac-12: 1
• SoCon: 1
• Total: 28

165 Pounds

• Big Ten: 8
• Big 12: 4
• ACC: 4
• EIWA: 6
• MAC: 3
• Pac-12: 2
• SoCon: 1
• Total: 26

174 Pounds

• Big Ten: 9
• Big 12: 5
• ACC: 3
• EIWA: 3
• MAC: 4
• Pac-12: 1
• SoCon: 1
• Total: 26

184 Pounds

• Big Ten: 10
• Big 12: 5
• ACC: 3
• EIWA: 4
• MAC: 3
• Pac-12: 1
• SoCon: 2
• Total: 28

197 Pounds

• Big Ten: 6
• Big 12: 7
• ACC: 1
• EIWA: 4
• MAC: 4
• Pac-12: 3
• SoCon: 1
• Total: 26

285 Pounds

• Big Ten: 7
• Big 12: 7
• ACC: 4
• EIWA: 3
• MAC: 3
• Pac-12: 1
• SoCon: 2
• Total: 27