Hokie Flyer

It is a long day, but hopefully they won't spread it late into day two or at least start later on day one. I am not sure 7 teams will spread across two days very well. It will be nice to be able to go out and have a nice dinner on day one and maybe medal matches at noon next day finishing earlier. Not sure about better experience for athletes. They will presumably have to make weight two days in a row - that will suck for some and I suspect some teams that have weight mgmt challenges will suffer in their performance. I guess we will have to watch for match schedule.

If you are a high seed and you fail to advance....you will be punished in the losers bracket.

Easy front, hard back and vice versa

We need team points. Either find someone capable of AA or will push our current guys over the top

We placed podium 10 years ago and have largely produced a consistently great team and while we havent reached podium again yet we have produced two ncaa individual champions to quench the thirst with returns to saturday night. And looking to the next year it is a real possibility to hit the perfecta and have a team podium and individual champ. Good times and unlike football sustainable beyond a decade and across two coaches.

There really is no off season anymore. The only VT sport where we can see our guys in action almost year round.

Ideally you do both. But if your line-up is a little unbalanced (some great ones, but not solid across all weights), you can have a scenario where your team will fair better in a larger field tournament like the NCAA due to more matches and larger placement points. Thus what happened for several years when comparing NCSt and VT. However, given the choice between the two...with some caveats performing better at NCAAs is probably more widely regarded than ACCT placement. This is because it is a national viewed tournament, not regional, and individual AA's and champions are coveted more.

Collegiate athletics is supposed to be for the students and should encourage wide and active participation in athletics, not for alumni to pursue bragging rights. To eliminate sports so that a school can focus on winning in one is both short sided and fallacious.

Where did all the Seidel weight issues come from? He did not look big this year to me - in fact, he looked a bit small compared to some of his opponents. He looked fantastic all year and certainly didn't seem bothered over 3 days of weigh-ins at NCAAT. Same thing with Bassett - some keep talking about him moving up to 149 when it has been mentioned by several that he is mid-40's dripping wet. Did this come from Seidel registering 65 kg? I can't imagine wrestling FS about 10 lbs over your normal wrestling weight in the off-season is that big of a deal.

When I read swapping one shade of orange for another (B1G to ACC) my first thought was Iowa to VT.

Very similar to how Seidel wrestled so strong this year. Henson has always had a massive gas tank but only slightly less aggressive. Gaj can be included in this group of guys that just want to score early and often. I just hope they don't hurt each other during practice, but man oh man what a group to train with.

And thank you for the data to support. Macch's improvement is particularly impressive given his jumps in weight class. But yes, that was my main point, some cases of big jumps in development exist, but it seems there are many more that plateau and never really improve year-over-year and it seems there are a lot of guys coming out of high school blazing away and are already "developed" and ready from the get go, more noticeable recently anyway. I guess I was just wondering how much development factors in versus uber talented.

Flo and Hokiesports suggest he was only on the Hokie wrestling squad his senior year and I can find no information prior to that to evaluate if that was improvement from previous years or if he just had a spectacular NCAAT that year. His W/L record that year did not suggest he would be expected to AA so 6th was a good result. ** Edited by Hokie Flyer at 3/25/2026, 7:08:03 AM

rotating in training partners throughout the season or every couple years really gives the team variety in training styles. If you are going against the same guys every day, then you really aren't being exposed to different styles and giving the opportunity to develop strategies or counters to styles where you might be a bad match up against. Some of our guys would do better to train against hyper aggressive guys, or really conservative guys, or goo on top/bottom guys. They say spice is the variety of life.

Haught was a multi AA but yes he eventually got to the finals so that is not a bad example. Gus and Sal IIRC were pretty good all the way through and then finally broke podium. So technically improved last year, but not quite the big jump. I remember Sal wrestled his ass off with the heart of a lion and we were all stunned when he did it. Decent examples for a good run last NCAA, but that was 10 years ago......my post was also about the recent times where it seems more and more freshman are making podium right out of high school. This year was insane. Across the board the incoming recruits are battle ready. Now Beans seemed to make a 5+ increase in ranking every year over his career IIRC. That is a good example of development. ** Edited by Hokie Flyer at 3/24/2026, 7:18:15 PM

Went to the Rutgers vs VT dual at Jersey Mike's and one of the Rutgers fans commented on Catka's physique as a true athletic heavy and I agreed. Little did I know..... The thread really isn't about any one opportunity or individual. I just do not see many examples of wrestlers trending up over their careers. They are the exception rather than the rule. I would not characterize this last season for Catka as a huge step forward, he admittedly did look better and had a nice run at NCAA's. The change probably did some good for him. Very few guys that do not AA get there in the last year or two. Certainly seems to be the case these days versus days of past. Thus, my suggestion that the high schoolers are coming along well before setting foot on a college mat more so than in the past. I mean McF, Carter, Mekhi, Henson, Seidel, Dance, Gaj were all good from the get go. I would like to see some examples of guys that didn't qualify or were 20+ ranked and then went on to "develop" into AA by their senior year.

Pretty much same result even a little less compared to this year RD12 2-2. He has been a model of consistency throughout his career IMO. I guess you could say it might be different had he won.

A lot of talk about development and upper weights. The topic got me to thinking about this and all the talk of all the great Freshman AAs this year. I agree with @Wilmington Hokie that at some point you have to look at the individuals as well as the coaching staff - some shared responsibility there for sure. I have come to the conclusion, albeit possibly wrong, that these days with the high quality training at the high school level that collegiate development is a bit of a mythical idea, and you pretty much know what you have by rFr or Sophomore year, and sometimes within Fr year at the collegiate level. I just do not think that there are many guys that are making big jumps in improvement over the course of their careers. Some even regress or taper off due to fatigue. The only guys I can recall that improved their placement year-over-year IMO were Beans and Walz. Outside of VT, Trumble, T. Hidlay ( @TartanHokie reminded me) and Karchla (distanced himself from Brady) are a couple of exceptions that come to mind. Other than that, it seems that all the great ones are phenoms right out of the gate - so many underclassmen reaching finals and podium this year. It seems that the last several years we keep expected returning starters to do better only to be disappointed that they are about the same - this happens everywhere. Penn State benefits greatly by being able to recruit 2 or 3 deep, so they seem to never miss on a recruit and if they do, there is some other young gun waiting. ** Edited by Hokie Flyer at 3/23/2026, 5:35:50 PM

That is still pretty darn good this year - and a tiny bit above where I thought we could be back in October. There was a lot of upside that was realized this year that I didn't expect, regardless of NCAAT finish. And after the ACCT performance, I kind of feel greedy asking for more at NCAAT (but I did and will anyway).

Flo updates brackets, results and team scores in real time. I don't think NCAA site does that.

Anyone that did not show 0-2 (or at least 1 W) for their experience would have made Friday. ** Edited by Hokie Flyer at 3/20/2026, 8:10:09 AM

Let's not give up yet.

Had Church and Sasso won, it would have been a good round. Mullen MD would have been icing. But alas, did not quite close these out. Except for the mental lapse, I thought Church and Desiante wrestled a good match against #8 seeds. The silver lining is all can still exceed their seeding - although Sasso will need to find his inner Epp. Looking forward to a better evening.

I don't recall entering an NCAAT as healthy as this, ever. Gaj looked to be 100% at ACCT and that was a big relief. After the semi round and impressive dominance, we look to be at peak, and IMO we have good seeding. - AAC dual and trny champs. - 5 ACC champs - 10 NQs - 4 top 4 seeds. There is no way I would have predicted all that at the beginning of this season. Ironically, having Henson in the line up would only be a marginal improvement over Gaj - crazy talk. Going to be an interesting NCAAT - we are in a good position. There will be surprises both up and down and will be fun to find out where.

Missed Bryce

Considering we will have 10 in the finals of the ACCT next year! Seriously, which school is in the rotation? Stanford?

As a team our reasonable ceiling would be 2nd at NCAA's. 4 Finalists and 8 AAs.