As we always do at this time, we are doing our projected seeding for the upcoming Big Ten championships at Rutgers. I will do one every weekday, continuing here with 184 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.

I don't know that I can remember a more unpleasant seeding scenario than the one this group at 184 produced. On the second edition of Friday FRL, David Bray and I attempted to make sense of the conference situation at this weight. It's still difficult, but let me know what you think of these seeds.

Seed Projections: 125 | 133 | 141 | 149 | 157 | 165 | 174

Projected 184 Seeds

1. Aaron Brooks, Penn State
2. Cam Caffey, Michigan State
3. Abe Assad, Iowa
4. Taylor Venz, Nebraska
5. Billy Janzer, Rutgers
6. Owen Webster, Minnesota
7. Rocky Jordan, Ohio State
8. Zac Braunagel, Illinois
9. Johnny Sebastian, Wisconsin
10. Jelani Embree, Michigan
11. Max Lyon, Purdue
12. Jack Jessen, Northwestern
13. Jakob Hinz, Indiana
14. Kyle Jasenski, Maryland

There is no clean way to do 184, as just about everyone will end up with losses to someone seeded below them. At 6-1 in conference matches, we have Aaron Brooks at the top. Yes, he lost to Taylor Venz, but in this weight, a single loss in conference is hard to come by.

A case can be made for Cam Caffey to be ahead of Brooks since the Spartan beat Venz and shares wins over Abe Assad, Owen Webster, Billy Janzer, Zac Braunagel and Johnny Sebastian. But he split with Janzer (holding the most recent loss), split with Braunagel, and lost to Jelani Embree. His 10 straight wins to close out the season rocketed him up in the rankings, but the loss to Embree is worse than the loss to Venz.

Abe Assad’s seed seems like the only one that made sense, as he missed Iowa’s final three duals following losses to Brooks and Caffey. Before that though he beat Rocky Jordan, Max Lyon, and Venz.

From January 18 to February, Venz had a 1-3 stretch that saw him beat Aaron Brooks but lose to Caffey, Assad, and Jordan. That leaves us with a situation where the four seed holds a win over the one seed, setting up a chance at revenge for the Nittany Lion or an upset special for the Husker in Saturday night’s semis.

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Billy Janzer and Owen Webster both defeated Rocky Jordan, so their tiebreaker wound up being Jelani Embree. Webster went 0-2 against Embree while took a win over the Wolverine in tiebreakers. Neither has any wins over those I have seeded above them, but Rocky does in the form of Venz. Again, it’s not pretty, but we had to order them as best we could.

Zac Braunagel wrestled far more conference matches than Johnny Sebastian, but those two never hit. Sebastian beat both Cash Wilcke and Max Lyon, who Braunagel lost to, but Braunagel split with Caffey (taking the early season win), who Sebastian lost to. I'm taking Braunagel since he also took one from Billy Janzer.

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The mess continues with Lyon, Embree, and Jack Jessen. Lyon holds the win over Braunagel, beat Jessen and lost to Embree. We know that Embree has good wins over Caffey and Webster, but ended the season on a six match losing streak, including falling to Jessen who he had previously beaten at CKLV. The nod went to Embree for his wins and it is most clean with the order being Embree, Lyon, Jessen.

Jakob Hinz beat Kyle Jasenski for his only conference win. Jasenski got an early-season win over Penn State backup Creighton Edsell which was avenged in the dual.