Breaking Down The 2020 Big Board

Breaking Down The 2020 Big Board

Analysis of the top seniors in the country, and where they're headed to wrestle in college.

Apr 30, 2020 by Brock Hite
74. Powerade And Escape The Rock

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What appears to be the final Big Board for the 2020 class dropped on March 25. Everyone around the country finished their postseason, except Ohio. Let's take a look at the Big Board from different angles comparing states, weight classes, and college recruiting of the soon-to-be graduates.

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What appears to be the final Big Board for the 2020 class dropped on March 25. Everyone around the country finished their postseason, except Ohio. Let's take a look at the Big Board from different angles comparing states, weight classes, and college recruiting of the soon-to-be graduates.

Pennsylvania State Dominance

Throughout the board we will look at the top 10, top 20, top 50, and top 100. Depending on how you frame the board you can draw different conclusions. One stat that stays consistent, no matter what framing you use, is the overwhelming number of Pennsylvania seniors earning recognition on the 2020 Big Board.

The top of the board is represented by eight different states, and only Pennsylvania has multiple prospects in the top 10. That is perhaps misleading, though. The Keystone State doesn’t need to inflate their numbers. Beau Bartlett and Lachlan McNeil are in the top 10 for Wyoming Seminary; their attribution is due to the prep school of their choice being located in Pennsylvania. Hunter Catka represents Pennsylvania and is the only true Pennsylvanian in the top 10. The variety of the top recruits tells you a lot about high-end talent being developed across the country.



Once you get outside the top 10 the Keystone State’s depth starts to show, and they hold the percentage that was artificially inflated at the top of the board. The further you get away from the top 10, the more the depth of the power states show. When looking at the top 100, the top states are the usual suspects. Pennsylvania has a staggering 30 wrestlers in the top 100. New Jersey, Ohio, California, and Missouri round out the top five.



Weight Distribution As Expected

All talk about changing, adding, or removing weight classes at the high school level turned out to be unwarranted, at least for another year. But it served as a good reminder for myself of the distribution of high school age humans. As it applies to the Big Board, the bell curve showed up pretty clearly. There aren’t any senior big boarders at 106 or 113lbs and there are just 22 athletes combined between the 120, 195, 220, and 285lb divisions. This reinforces the belief that landing a top prospect at 125 and 285lbs is very valuable to a recruiting class.


When you look at the board through projected college weights the emphasis on the bookends holds true. 125 and 285lbs have the fewest top 100 prospects. In a bit of a surprise, 133lbs and 197lbs have the two highest totals on the board with 141 and 157lbs matching the total projected 197lbers. By removing a few weights and redistributing everyone into college weights, the easily seen bell curve disappears, and the talent looks more evenly distributed at the next level.


WeightTop 10Top 20Top 50Top 100
1250118
13313414
14112711
14922510
15712711
1651239
1741159
18402510
197241011
2851137


What Schools Snagged Top 20 Talent?

The top 20 of the Big Board is filled with blue-chip talent that should be scoring premium points at the NCAA Championships in the coming years. There wasn’t an overwhelming winner at securing this coveted talent. Oklahoma State leads the way with three recruits representing 15% of the top 20. Iowa, Penn State, Cornell, and Nebraska each picked up two recruits in the top 20. The nine remaining recruits will disperse among nine other schools.

Conference Hauls

The current qualifying system rewards strong conferences. You want a competitive conference to secure bids. In the old qualifying system, current athletes were better served by a weak conference that was riding the wave of the past five years of success that secured bids. Conferences now live by the “a rising tide lifts all boats,” motto. The more top-100 recruits, the better off the conference will be. On the surface, it looks like the Big Ten and EIWA won the recruiting battle here. But that’s not the case. With just six teams, The ACC picked up 2.33 top 100 recruits for every institution. That edged out the Big Ten that scooped up 2.0 per team. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Pac-12 only picked up one top-100 recruit. Jesse Vasquez’s late commitment to Arizona State accounts for the only top-100 recruit in the Pac-12. If you’re a West Coast fan, don’t get too upset, as there is a lot of young talent in the conference.


The Big Ten did rule the recruiting of the top-20 recruits. Almost half of the top-20 recruits are headed to the Big Ten. Winning a Big Ten Championship is often on par with winning a National Championship. Expect that trend to continue.