Iowa solidifies top spot in WIN’s final rankings
NEWTON, Iowa — Michigan’s Myles Amine has taken over the top spot at 197 pounds and Big Ten champion Iowa has solidified its role as the team-to-beat for the upcoming NCAA Division I Championships according to WIN Magazine’s March 9, 2021 national rankings.
The Wolverine senior, who has earned three All-American honors in the past at 174 pounds, is coming off a Big Ten championship victory over Nebraska’s Eric Schultz, who was ranked №1 in WIN’s March 1 rankings.
Meanwhile, Iowa, which will be looking for their first team championship since 2010, is expected to send 10 ranked wrestlers to the 2021 Nationals that will take place March 18–20 in St. Louis, Mo. Among those ranked wrestlers are four top-ranked wrestlers who all won conference titles last Sunday: Spencer Lee (125), Jaydin Eierman (141), Alex Marinelli (165) and Michael Kemerer (174). Overall, the Hawkeyes earned 138 points in WIN’s Tournament Power Index.
WIN’s TPI predicts approximately how many NCAA points a team will score in St. Louis, excluding bonus points, based on numbers associated with individual placements/rankings at this point in the season prior to seeds coming out: 20 for 1st, 16 for 2nd, 13.5 for 3rd, 12.5 for 4th, 10 for 5th, 9 for 6th, 6.5 for 7th and 5.5 for 8th. Wrestlers ranked 9–12 earn two points each, followed by 1.5 points for wrestlers ranked 13–16 and 1 point for those ranked 17–20.
Penn State, which has won eight of the previous nine national tournaments, prior to the 2020 Nationals that were cancelled because of COVID-19, ranks second in WIN’s TPI with 81.5 points. The Nittany Lions feature eight ranked wrestlers, including Aaron Brooks, who is ranked №1 at 184 pounds.
Pac-12 champion Arizona State moved up to №3 in WIN’s TPI with 68 points, followed by the ACC’s top two teams in Virginia Tech and NC State.
The remaining top-ranked individuals include Oklahoma State’s Daton Fix (133), North Carolina’s Austin O’Connor (149), Northwestern’s Ryan Deakin (157) and Minnesota’s Gable Steveson (Hwt).
WIN’s rankings, following the seven national-qualifying tournaments, are a blend of both NCAA predictions and “normal” rankings based on what guys have earned throughout the shortened season and conference tournaments.
Fans will see quite a bit more movement in the rankings than normal because WIN has positioned wrestlers closer to where the rankings committee predicts these rated wrestlers will finish at the NCAAs. However, this set of rankings will vary quite a bit more from where we predict guys will get seeded this year in comparison to other years because of the shorter season, which resulted in less head-to-head match-ups of ranked individuals, meaning seeds likely will be more subjective than usual.
WIN Magazine’s March 9, 2021 Tournament Power Index
1. Iowa
2. Penn State
3. Arizona State
4. Virginia Tech
5. NC State
6. Oklahoma State
7. Michigan
8. Nebraska
9. Missouri
10. Minnesota
