James Hackney
With the regular season over, it’s now time for conferences as OU looks to continue the trend of strong conference results. The team showed some issues in their final dual at Bedlam, but have had two weeks in the room to improve. The past two years OU has finished in first and second despite a near 0.500 dual record. The Sooners have seven wrestlers seeded, with Wyatt Henson, Jared Hill, and Carson Berryhill unseeded.
If seeds held then they would have five automatic qualifiers based on projections. That would be four less than last year. As far as team score goes based on seeds then OU is projected eighth with 48 points. That doesn’t include bonus or advancement points as those are harder to project. Bonus points are a big part of what put OU in the top three the past two years. While the projection is rough on paper, there are some clear weights where they could finish higher and get the Sooners closer to the top.
Brackets can be found here. I created an interactive bracket that you can download and fill out here. Of note, the interactive bracket only scores placement points as well.
125lbs: #29 Joey Prata (17-12) – 7 Seed (6 Automatic Qualifiers)
Last year Prata finished fourth at Big 12’s despite being seeded 7th, and has a good shot to do that again this year. With only 6 qualifying spots, he’ll need to beat his seed by at least one. He gets a tough first round match against Air Force’s Tucker Owens, a true freshman who’s bounced in and out of the rankings. If Prata can get past Owens, he’ll see another true freshman in Jore Volk of Wyoming who’s the two seed….
