So...in an effort to bring as much coverage this weekend to Mizzou's trip to the University of Northern Iowa, I have found the brackets finally released this morning. If you care to view them, you may do so here (PDF file), but I will go ahead and post my (mostly unknowledgeable) thoughts below.
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So...from my Wrestling Wrap-Up: Bucknell post, here were the "latest" rankings of the teams involved with the National Duals.
Iowa #1
Iowa State #2
Minnesota #3
Penn State #4
Central Michigan #5
Michigan #7
Missouri #8
Northwestern #9
Chattanooga #10
Nebraska #11
Ohio State #12
Indiana #15
Hofstra #16
Cornell #17
UNI (receiving votes)
West Virginia
Bare in mind that shortly after I saw this, UNI went ahead and beat UT-C...just showing the depth of this tournament that much more.
So...here are the seeds...they only "seed" the top 8, but using the standard 16-team bracket, one can infer the bottom 8 seeds from their placement.
Penn State #1
Iowa #2
Iowa State #3
Central Michigan #4
Minnesota #5
Michigan #6
Mizzou #7
Northwestern #8
Nebraska #9
Indiana #10
UNI #11
West Virginia #12
Ohio State #13
Hofstra #14
Cornell #15
UT-C #16
Again, the rankings used in my original post were based off of themat.com, however this morning I find these rankings which certainly give more rationale as to how the planning folks came to the above seeds. At any rate, still some strange seeds as Ohio State is ranked #11 nationally and ahead of Indiana (#15) UNI (#24) and West Virginia (RV). There are other instances of that sort of thing in the lower half, just strange to me a little bit.
And anyway, while shooting down one rant a tad, it does show something a little strange in wrestling which is the existance of no less than 5 polls, all of which get used when most convenient. Also, the change at the top was because Okie State went into Carver-Hawkeye in front of 14K people and beat the #1 Hawkeyes this past weekend 19-14.
Back to where Mizzou falls in all of this, the initial rankings I used had them likely pitted against NU, but this has them against Indiana, who we have already covered are a little out of place. I will get into a preview of that match likely on Friday (will probably be the only match I preview since once the tourney starts there will not be time enough to fully review AND preview). Looming in the 2nd round will be a TOUGH Iowa team who will not only be looking to get their #1 ranking back (as Minn did to us last year after we had held them off the first time at the Southern Scuffle), but will also no doubt have plenty of fans in the house. It may be hard to believe, but while driving back from MN a few weekends ago, I listened on a NUMBER of radio stations to the Iowa/Iowa State dual...they are just insane about the sport up there.
More to come, just wanted to get this out there to start getting ready for the weekend.