MONEYBALL OLYMPICS EDITION (featuring ZANE, ZAC & DANNY)
WHO: ZANE RICHARDS, DANNY BRAUNAGEL & ZAC BRAUNAGEL
WHAT: OLYMPIC TEAM TRIALS COMPETITION
WHERE: Bryce Jordan Center, Penn State University
WHY: SELECT AMERICAN TEAM FOR PARIS OLYMPICS
TV/STREAMING: PEACOCK & USA NETWORK (only finals both days)
WHEN: Friday April 19 and Saturday April 20 (Eastern times below)
PEACOCK / USA NETWORK
Note that USA Network will only show the finals on Friday and Saturday evening. We signed up for Peacock for $5.99 per month (cancel anytime supposedly) so that we can watch all of the matches. You can sign up at this link. They do have movies and tv shows. Appealing to us, they have just uploaded Oppenheimer, and we haven't seen that yet, but they also have The Dog Who Saved Halloween, so maybe some stinkers too.
MONEYBALL!
In this post, we dive into the characteristics of the first-round opponents of the IRTC wrestlers. This is our Moneyball look at their opponents. What stances and ties do they favor? What kind of shots/throws do they take? What kind do they convert?
While watching the matches of potential opponents, we stop the video and note which ties are being used, which takedowns are being attempted, etc. From the data we have mined, we churn out pie charts.
CAVEATS
There are a few caveats about this project. Most importantly, we are limited in the number of matches we have examined. USA Wrestling knew all of the participants the minute the final hand was raised at the Last Chance Qualifier, but decided to provide brackets four days before their biggest event.
Additionally, this is the work of a team of amateurs. We don't have the expertise that the IRTC coaching staff possesses, nor the athletes themselves. So, this is an exercise for us fans.
ZANE RICHARDS
The IRTC hero will start with a bye. Then, he'll face the winner of the Lilledahl/DeShazer match. They are the #8 and #9 seeds. Win that, and he will face the Megaludis/Lee winner.
Because of a lack of time, we are going to make some assumptions with our Moneyball analysis. Zane is going to beat the winner of DeShazer and Lilledahl. Those two will have to wrestle two hours after making scratch weight while Zane has those same two hours plus the time of their match and an additional thirty minutes or so to rehydrate.
We also assume that Spencer Lee beats Nico Megaludis. They wrestled twice recently with Lee taking relatively close decisions. This isn't a given, as Megaludis is tough, and, in a bit of good news for Zane, these two will wear each other out.
So, with that explanation, here is our Moneyball look at the Hawkeye with the bad knees:
As for stance, Lee usually has his right leg forward, sometimes way forward, but he also has a square stance. His ties are basically caveman smashing attempts, starting with a hand on the forehead or a collar tie and working down hard and fast. He favors collar ties, then tricep ties, then underhooks, and also grabbing wrists.
Opponents scored on him with stepouts, singles, a scramble exposure and a bloody half nelson. Blimey! The data above is from only five matches, involving Nico Megaludis (x2), Zach Sanders, Luke Lilledahl and Josh Rodriguez.
In this tournament, Spencer will have to make scratch weight, and he has shown second-period fatigue against Megaludis twice with an allowance. Moreover, the former Nittany Lion did his scoring in that same second period while Lee's needle was approaching empty.
Although he lost, we enjoyed Josh Rodriguez' approach to this matchup. He threw arms and pushed and shoved right out of the gate. He also moved a lot and attacked from the side, which negates, somewhat, the strength of Lee.
ZAC BRAUNAGEL
The Brawlnagel has a bye in the first round, and then he has Ben Provisor. He knows the first guy he is scheduled to meet because Provisor got a bye as well.
Provisor is a greybeard on the team at 33 years old. He wrestled in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics and even had a stint at folkstyle at NAIA Grand View back in 2022. (Zac would kill him in folkstyle). Here is our Moneyball look at five Provisor matches against Barrett Stanghill, Andrew Berreyesa and Spencer Woods (x3):
The old timer has slowed down considerably, now relying mostly on his strength and less so on his speed. He will usually give up whatever hold his opponent wants and just push back with his hands or an elbow. Provisor doesn't take many people down or throw them, at least in the matches we surveyed. He was content to get a second-period gut wrench or two.
This will be a brutal match.
When he does resort to a tie, it is most often an underhook, followed by a collar tie, then an overhook. He sometimes has a problem with keeping his head up, which is really dangerous, and he got caught grabbing a singlet in one match.
His opponents have scored on him with passivity calls (in four of five matches, he went down in the first period), spin behinds (x2) a push out and that singlet pull. Brawny will want to kill this guy with pace from the get-go, and keep it up in the second period. Movement confuses the old-timer, and he hates his arm being dragged.
DANNY BRAUNAGEL
This IRTC hero will have a first-round bye and then toe the line against RaVaughn Perkins in the second round. He also knows his first opponent.
When Danny Braunagel was in the sixth or seventh grade, RaVaughn Perkins was wrestling Pat Smith in Senior national tournaments. He finished 17th in the 2018 World Championships and won Pan Am Championship Gold in 2018 and 2019.
Like his brother, this Brawlnagel is wrestling a greybeard. Here is a Moneyball survey of data from five of Perkins' matches, including bouts with Aliksandr Kikiniou, Payton Jacobson (x2), Fritz Schierl, Britton Holmes:
Perkins keeps his head real low, begging for a front headlock, but he gets away with it for long stretches of matches because he is a proficient wrist and hand grabber. His favorite hold by far is a 2-on-1 followed by an underhook. When he has neither, he is digging and grabbing wrists.
Opponents scored against him in a number of different ways, including step outs (2), passivity (3), gut wrench (4), push out, step over and reversal. In the five matches that we surveyed, Perkins was zero for every par terre gut wrench and lift attempt.
Get past Perkins, and Danny will face Kamal Bey for the right to wrestle in the Finals.
IRTC EMAIL AND U20s
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FRIENDS OF THE IRTC
We would be wrong not to include brackets for former IRTC wrestlers and friends of the program like Kamal Bey and Joe Rau. Bey's 77 kg bracket is above, and we have already talked about him. He's the #1 seed and will be a very difficult hurdle for Danny to clear. Here is Joe's pathway:
Go ILLINI and friends of the IRTC! We are very excited to see what y'all can do. Best wishes from us.
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