How high can NC State wrestling finish at the NCAA Championships and scoring guide

How high can NC State wrestling finish at the NCAA Wrestling Championships?

The question will be asked countless times on Twitter over the next three days, so this is me preemptively preparing with a guide to scoring at the NCAA Wrestling Championships, held Thursday through Sunday in Detroit, and how high NC State wrestling can finish.

We’ll answer the latter question first, with a full scoring guide at the bottom. If you ask me about scoring on Twitter, I will send you this link. If your friend asks you about scoring, you can do the same.

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How high can NC State wrestling finish at NCAAs?

Only two ACC teams have ever brought home a team trophy from the NCAA Championships, which requires a top-four finish on the sport’s biggest stage. Virginia Tech did so first, in 2016, and NC State followed up two years later; both squads captured fourth place.

The Wolfpack has a chance to repeat, though it’s not necessarily expected. If the better seed won all 640 matches in the three-day event, NC State would finish in fifth place, 7.5 team points behind Arizona State (68). Of course, this exercise does not take bonus points into account — and in addition to “outwrestling” their seeds, that’s another way NC State can surpass expectations. Bonus points are awarded for winning by major decision (8-14 points), technical fall (15 points) or pin.

Two wrestlers —184-pound redshirt sophomore Trent Hidlay and 157-pound freshman Ed Scott — were among the nation’s top bonus-point scorers leading up to NCAAs. Super seniors Tariq Wilson (149) and Hayden Hidlay (174) can also be counted on to score bonus points in the tournament. All four enter competition seeded among the top four at the weights.

Penn State (winners of eight of the last 10 NCAA team titles), defending champion Iowa and Michigan — who surprised everybody by beating their Big Ten rivals at the conference tournament 10 days ago — are expected to be the top three teams at NCAAs. Should any underwhelm, that opens the door for NC State to finish as high as third.

But fourth is more likely, and still a huge accomplishment.

What will it take for an NC State trophy?

The Wolfpacker has run a few bracket projections without bonus points because those are so hard to predict on a match-to-match basis at NCAAs to get some “raw” team scores. The magic number, before bonus points, will probably be in the high 60s or low 70s to make a team trophy likely.

Based on a “chalk” bracket, Iowa would be in the low 80s before bonus points, so it would probably take a pretty significant overachievement on a team level for NC State to reach third (or underachievement from one of the three aforementioned squads).

In the last 10 years, the fourth-place NCAA team has averaged scored between 70.5 team points (with bonus) and as many as 102.5, with an average of 80.7. So that gives you an idea of the neighborhood NC State needs to be in.  

We also ran a bracket projection trying to determine the “minimum” that it would take for NC State to surpass Arizona State and take fourth. Obviously, there are a ton of other factors that play into this equation as well, but this is based mostly on other chalk results.

One of the biggest variables in the race for the final team trophy could be matches that don’t even involve an NC State wrestler.

For example, Arizona State heavyweight Cohlton Schultz earned the No. 2 seed with his undefeated 18-0 record. However, his team wrestled some other squads of top heavyweights, but he did not compete. That sets up an intriguing path for him to the finals (or not).

NC State fans should keep an eye on all seven Arizona State wrestlers throughout, but Schultz in particular could provide some pivotal points (or not), starting in the quarterfinals, when he faces No. 7 seed Mason Parris of Michigan, who was an NCAA finalist last year at the weight.

NC State and Michigan are both in trophy contention, but the move for Wolfpack fans is probably to pull for Parris in the above situation. Other particularly volatile ASU wrestlers to watch could be fifth-seed Kyle Parco at 149 and third-seeded Michael McGee at 133.

Here’s the “minimum” that we think it would take to surpass Arizona State in the team standings:

All-Americans (final placement): 149 Tariq Wilson (second), 157 Ed Scott (fourth), 174 Hayden Hidlay (third), 184 Trent Hidlay (third)

Blood-rounders (one why shy of All-America honors): 125 Jakob Camacho, 197 Isaac Trumble

NCAA prediction for NC State

The bracket math above is always fun, though highly speculative. But so is playing out every match in the bracket and seeing where the team scores land.

Here’s how NC State wrestlers finished in The Wolfpacker’s full bracket prediction, which had the Pack placing in fourth place with 67 team points (plus bonus), quite a distance away from third-place Michigan (94.5) but also significantly ahead of No. 5 Arizona State (45).

It’s worth noting there’s a tightly contested group of teams that scored at least 40 points to look out for: No. 6 Nebraska (44.5), No. 7 Ohio State (44), No. 8 Cornell (40) and No. 8 Wisconsin (40). ACC rival Virginia Tech was 10th in this exercise with 37.5 team points.

All-Americans: 125 Jakob Camacho (eighth), 149 Tariq Wilson (second), 157 Ed Scott (fourth), 174 Hayden Hidlay (fourth) and 184 Trent Hidlay (third).

It’s worth noting that while those five wrestlers will provide the big points, the key to an NC State team trophy will be points from all 10 wrestlers (the Wolfpack is one of only three schools to qualify all 10 starters). This fourth-place prediction had every Wolfpack wrestler winning at least one match, and two falling in the blood round (165 Thomas Bullard and 197 Isaac Trumble).

It seems safe to say a team trophy is going to take at least four All-Americans, but if it’s just four they’d have to place pretty high on the podium. If they get five, that increases the margin of error of where that handful of All-Americans place.

A best-case scenario could see the Wolfpack with as many as three NCAA finalists, though all three wrestling well enough to do that in the same tournament seems unlikely. However, multiple finalists would also increase the margin for error at other weights.

NC State finishing with three All-Americans (or less) would feel disappointing.

NCAA Wrestling Championships scoring guide

There are three ways to score points at NCAAs:

Advancement points: Every win in the bracket (until placement matches) earns the winner an advancement point — 1.0 in the championship bracket and 0.5 team points in consolations.

Placement points: The top eight placers earn placement points for their team. It’s important to note as you are tracking the team race that these are awarded as soon as they are earned. For example, winners of the semifinals are both awarded second-place points (12) as soon as they clinch a spot in the championship bout. Therefore the winner is awarded only an additional four points.

Placements points are as follows:

1st — 16

2nd — 12

3rd — 10

4th — 9

5th — 7

6th — 6

7th — 4

8th — 3

Bonus points: Just like a college wrestling dual, domination is rewarded. Ending a match early via a pin earns the winner two additional team points, while a technical fall (winning by 15 points) earns 1.5 team points and a major decision (winning by 8-14 points) earns 1.0 bonus point.

The Wolfpacker has former NC State wrestler and current college wrestling broadcaster Ryan Tice providing updates from Detroit throughout the next three days, so keep it locked it on TheWolfpacker.com for the latest from the tournament and NC State’s quest for its second team trophy in program history.