Week 1 Rankings Update

[Wrestleknownothing]

Oklahoma State makes a big jump in both Intermat and Flo rankings this week, improving two slots to fifth.

Both Swiderski and Ryder jumped up the rankings after the All-Star Classic.

Also of note is the difference of opinion between the two rankers when it comes to Iowa State. Intermat has them second on 94 points while Flo only sees 80 points in that lineup and a fourth place finish.

Intermat


Flo

 

[Wrestleknownothing]

Ranking Methodology
For newcomers I thought I would include a little something on methodology as what I do differs from Intermat and Flo. I use the last 11 tournaments worth of results (2014 - 2025 - the 16 and 33 seed era) to build a model for expected points. I include placement, advancement and bonus points in my model. I fit the data in two dimensions to come up with expected points per seed, and the probability of each possible placement 1-33.

In this way my predictions are probabilistic. Intermat and Flo use binary predictions.

They assume their #1 ranked will finish first, their #2 ranked will finish second, etc. and they do not include bonus points. There are few consequences of our differences.

If a team with a lot of high seeds performs to seed my model will underestimate their results.

The Intermat and Flo models will underestimate the contributions of anyone ranked #9 - #33 as it will assume they never earn AA while overestimating the contributions of their top 8 ranked as it will assume they always AA.

 

[ionel]

Ranking Methodology
For newcomers

Note reactions work over in these here parts.

 

[Wrestleknownothing]

Note reactions work over in these here parts.

Yeah, I have retired from those parts.

 

[okokzach]

Note reactions work over in these here parts.

Where's the Bob Dole option?

 

[chasepollard]

Good stuff!

I think nice asked before, but couldn’t find it easily. What is the accuracy of pre/early season versus final results?

 

[TheJimReaper]

Where's the Bob Dole option?

I know what you’re referring to but what does the Bob Dole thing mean? Does the owner of the site just like Bob Dole?

 

[okokzach]

I know what you’re referring to but what does the Bob Dole thing mean? Does the owner of the site just like Bob Dole?

I wish I knew. @ionel can you fill us in?

 

[Wrestleknownothing]

Good stuff!

I think nice asked before, but couldn’t find it easily. What is the accuracy of pre/early season versus final results?

I always get the numbers right but they aren't always with the right team. Haha.

Actually the numbers are best guesses based on partial information with a lot of sources of error so they can be pretty sketchy at the margins.

For example, freshmen are typically not ranked, even very good ones, until they have some college matches to go on. And even then they typically start pretty low until, and if they beat someone notable.

And for preseason rankings there are always situations where the starting lineup is not yet known. This year there are a couple of weights among top programs that are TBD. Sometimes even after wrestle offs there are question marks. In other cases schools use early open tournaments as de facto wrestle offs.

Then there are injuries. No way to predict when and no way to predict who.

Even if all that is known there is the problem of my numbers. They are fitted averages. But individuals (and teams) outperform and underperform all the time. Some of that is baked into the numbers, and sometimes outliers are extreme enough to not be accounted for. That said my r-squared last year was pretty good (0.956). Below is a plot of expected average score per seed versus actual average score per seed for 2025. As you can see the biggest miss was the #5 seed which performed historically bad with only 3 of the 10 making AA

 

[newguy123]

Funny - the all star classic isn't an official match and doesn't go on their records but it does affect rankings.