Expected Team Points as of 3/10/26 - The "Yeah, Yeah. But When Do We Get The Seeds?" Edition

An interesting thing happened on the way to the forum.

What looked like a battle for second among PSU, anOSU, and Iowa in mid-December (with one of the three taking first), a month later became a battle for third among three or four teams. In mid-January it was PSU's title and anOSU's second place to lose. But now, in mid-March, as we stand on the cusp of all important seeding information, through the joint efforts of anOSU and a different OSU (and maybe a little Nebraska) we are back to a battle for second.

The conference tournaments shook things up a bit in the middle of the top end. Oklahoma State is now within rounding error of Ohio State. Nebraska moved past Iowa State to put itself in contention for the podium. Virginia Tech got a boost into expected seventh behind Iowa. NC State slipped below Cornell. And Stanford replaced Illinois in expected tenth.



This graph assumes teams score points at the historic rate for a given seed/rank i.e. the way "the field" scores.
Once the seeds come out I will do two versions of this. One using the field derived values, and one with a Penn "We Aint The Field" State adjustment.

CowbellMan said:

With due respect to your hard work, at what point was PSU legitimately a threat to be 2nd? Barr would return to the lineup and 141 was always a low output even if Nagao wrestled. The graph shows that that little gap at a time when 141 was in question and some didn't understand why Duke was wrestling instead of Kasak, discounting his ability to beat Yianni to make a Senior world team.

By any measure, it was always PSU 1. Never a race for that spot.

Click to expand...

Legitimately? No, not legitimately. Clearly the argument then, and now, was GIGO.