WE ARE ADAPTIVE WRESTLING-SPECIFIC MEDIA

I have found that a benefit of being “Rod & Cone Impaired” is that I do not want to immediately Google something I do not know if I am lying in bed nursing a headache.  I have time to ponder the answer to the questions with which I am vexed without, as I view it, cheating.  Wednesday’s venture onto the “Ponderosa” involved the origin of the expression “pipe dream.”

[Please know that I did not 100% research the seeds listed below or even proofread this article to my standards.  But it is 10:30 p.m. and I have camera equipment to prep and pack.  I have folds to clothe and pack.  (Actually, that is a common spoonerism that just comes out sometimes - just like in my UT-Austin paleontology class when we were taught about the straw juctures of sharks.)   Then everything has to be brought to the first floor prior to my Friday departure.]

I knew it was tool old an expression to reflect the inner-city problems of the 1980s and 1990s.  Might it be from the 1960s and 1970s?    The Lord of the Rings might have been a Tolkien pipe dream lasting from 1937-1949, particularly if he was smoking that Longbottom leaf.  Then my history kicked-in and I recalled the opium dens of 19th-century San Francisco and the long, often ornate, opium pipes used by connoisseurs.  Cheech and Chong Nah, those were not pipes. (a little older than their 1960s and 1970s roots) Tolkien (circa 1960s) Opium Smoker (circa 1880s) The phrase came to mind as I determined finishing the Public-Schools Wrestling Championships (PSWC) and a significant portion of the Louisiana Classic (LACL) articles before I leave for the Ken Cole Memorial was exactly that – a pipe dream.  I tried, but, for lack of better expressions… When H. Ross Perot and Homey the Clown are used as excuses, one just has to swallow any remaining vestiges of pride and stop.

I am finished with the Public-Schools Wrestling Championship (PSSC) cover and awards photos.  But I have only completed match photos through 132 lbs. as of Wednesday evening.  Tuesday I did the precutting and then final editing of about 150 awards photographs and edited close to 200 photos from 126 lbs. and 132 lbs.  Hence the cranial discomfort.

The Louisiana Classic (LACL) photos are separated into finals and semifinals match folders, as well as awards folders. 

Re John Curtis, St. Amant and Hannan – well, the photos are on the computer.

Learning from the PSSCs, I did not take as many LACL photographs and probably will not take as many Ken Cole photos either.  This should allow me to finish everything, including a preview, prior to the state championships.

Or not.  At times, general life snuffs out my pipe dreams.

But there is that which we know now…

That Which We Know Now

The LACL surprised just about everyone, and I dare include champion Catholic head coach Tommy Prochaska.  How, though, can one extrapolate those results into how teams will perform in Division I at the state championships.  (Division II and III schools’ performances can not be remotely estimated as many do not participate in the LACL.)

My first inane waste of time not spent editing photographs was to compare how individual wrestlers placed compared to their seedings.  Hence, if someone were seeded third and placed fourth, that weight class for that school would get a “-1.”  If a top-seeded wrestler won, the amount would be “0.” 

First I used how everyone was seeded and placed.  If one lost the match before a consolation semifinals, that wrestler was deemed to place seventh.  Losing a match prior to that one would mean an 11th place.  Those numbers had Catholic out-placing their seeding by 58.  The number for Teurlings Catholic (TC) was 32.  Jesuit’s number was six whereas Brother Martin’s was -37.  It was not surprising that Catholic fared so much better than they were seeded – again, nobody expected the Bear to win the event, much less by 35 points.  But the differences between TC, Breaux Mart (my sister still calls me that, albeit she knows quite well that I went to St. Martin’s) and Jesuit seemed a tad off.  TC was expected to be close to Brother Martin, and they were, as the Rebels outscored the Crusaders by 0.5 points.  But that seemed to say TC was very poorly seeded, and they really were not.  I also cannot believe the seeding committee went through a lot of effort deciding who should be seeded 25th or 26th. So, I reduced the number of wrestlers I counted to those who placed in the top-six, earning team bonus points.  And to reduce the inherent skewing involved with wrestlers who far exceeded or subceeded their ceeding (OK – I got carried away – seeding), I deleted those wrestlers.  Et voilà!  Things looked much better.  Catholic again superseded the expectations of others with a total of 12.  But TC and Brother Martin both netted 0, and Jesuit a -1.  That explains Catholic’s 35-point margin, TC outscoring the Crusaders by a mere half-point and Jesuit finishing two points behind the Crusaders.

So now I, at least, am happy I have mathematically made sense of the LACL.  But what does that say about the state championships?  Nothing useful, really.  Three wrestlers from Division II and two from Division III won LACL titles.  Four Division II wrestlers placed second and there were some kids from Texas who fared pretty well.  I would have to do something about those pesky Division II, III and Texas wrestlers.

This was a time when TrackWrestling proved extremely useful.  The “Team Results” section allowed me to see how many wins and losses the Catholic, Brother Martin and Jesuit kids had against their DII, DIII and Texas opponents.  I could then determine their win-loss percentages against applicable groups. 

The results were not surprising.  Catholic won 67% of their Division I matches.  The Crusaders and Blue Jays were virtually tied at 63%.  The Bears, though, wrestled fewer matches against DI schools, 33, than did Brother Martin and Jesuit, at 38 and 40 respectively.  Those percentages seemed valid.  Catholic, though, wrestled 30 non-D1 matches.  The Crusaders had 21 and the Blue Jays 23.  All three schools won between 70% and 80% of those matches.  Those percentages do not matter, though.  What matters is the number of those matches each school won.  For Catholic, Brother Martin and Jesuit those numbers were 21, 16 and 18.  Those numbers translate directly into team points, and the Bears, while not winning a higher percentage of D2, D3 and Texas matches than the Crusaders or Blue Jays, still scored more team points than their Division I rivals against those opponents.

All the figurin’ does is indicate that Catholic will come back to the pack with Brother Martin and Jesuit.  The Bears will not, most likely, have any top seeds and will not have the point advantage from matches against Division II and III opposition.  Have no doubt, the Bears earned the LACL title and are a far superior team than they were in the first half of the season.  But the Division I team championship will be a close one if the top-three teams use the same lineups as they did at the LACL.

Odds are, though, that Jesuit will not use the same lineup.  They will add one more to the 13 the Blue Jays entered in the LACL.  Some kid named Lanosga.  It is highly likely, though, that Spencer Lanosga, the defending 285 lbs. Division I state champion.  There is a minor problem, however.  He only has the Ken Cole, a dual against Brother Martin and the District 9-5A tournament remaining.  That may mean only nine matches, at best, which is one less than required by LHSAA seeding rules to be considered for seeding.  Or not.  The same rules, I believe, existed in the 2019-20 season.  Catholic’s Connor Finucane had only four actual matches, a bye and two forfeits on his record yet was still seeded first (and won).  Perhaps exceptions can be made.

Were I to seed the top four Division I wrestlers in each weight class as per LHSAA rules, sans the benefit of the Ken Cole Memorial and city/district/region championships, and the odd duals meets in between, I would seed them as follows:

At 120 lbs. Jacob Elsensohn may get, well, the word "hosed" comes to mind.  Near the end of his LACL semifinals match against Southside's Landon Reaux, Elsensohn defaulted the match due to an injury.  He withdrew from the tournament, and thus technically forfeited to Catholic's Watts Goodson, whom Elsensohn defeated at 126 lbs. 1-0 in a dual meet, and to Walker's Kye Karcher. whom he had not encountered in a previous match.  That could lead to Elsensohn being seeded in the fourth spot behind Watts and Karcher.  One might think Elsensohn might enter the Ken Cole to try to defeat Karcher, and thus be in the bottom of the state championship bracket, but while Walker has four wrestlers entered, the Crusaders have none. 

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