1979 – 2025 (12+ Seeds and 8 AA’s Era)

Two team performances in the past two tournaments got me thinking about which teams most outperformed and underperformed their expectations in the NCAA tournament.

Expectations

In my previous post I walked through how I developed an expected points model built on the historical performance of seeds. The goal there was to predict how a team would actually perform given their collection of seeds. The goal here is a little different.

Here we are looking to calculate which team most outperformed their seed and which team most underperformed their seed. Since we are comparing each team to itself the expected points model, where we look at the aggregate of every team’s performance, does not make sense. Instead, for this exercise I want to compare a team’s actual result to the result they would have attained if they wrestled exactly to seed.

To do this I went through each year and calculated the placement points a given seed was worth if it also equaled the finish. Then I added in a value for their advancement points. The advancement points proved tricky. They are based on a number of factors including points per consolation win, number of possible consolation wins, number of paths to a given position, treatment of byes, number of seeds relative to places, and number of seeds relative to the size of the field.

All of these things changed over the years and almost never at the same time. For example, from 1955 to 1974 a consolation win was worth as much as a championship win. And the size of the consolation bracket changed four times between 1955 and 1996. The tournament also toggled from being scored as a 32-man bracket, to being scored as a 64-man bracket, and back to being scored as a 32-man bracket. It was a bit of a mess.

Mistakes were made. Oaths were uttered. Fists were balled and futilely shaken at previous generations. But I believe I landed on something that is pretty accurate.

Seeds Matter

At least sometimes and kinda.

Seeding didn’t begin until the 1940 tournament, but even then there was a lot of experimentation with the format. Weights were added, weights were deleted. Seeds matched places, seeds didn’t match places. And it is notable that they seeded many fewer places. From 1928 to 1978 they never seeded more than a third of the field that had at least 150 wrestlers.

The greater the number of unseeded wrestlers, the less meaningful the seed. That also makes any analysis based on seeds less meaningful.

For this reason I am only considering teams from the 1979 tournament through the 2025 tournament for this achievement/dubious title.

And The Winner Is…

Now that the book-keeping is complete, let’s reveal our winners

Greatest Over Achiever

#1 – 1997 Iowa Hawkeyes

I thought this might be the 2025 Nebraska Cornhuskers, but they came in a close second. Iowa entered the tournament with seven seeded wrestlers and three unseeded. This was the last year Dan Gable coached the Hawkeyes and they were determined to send him out in style. Even though Oklahoma State was a clear favorite (by 21 points based on seeds), Iowa cruised to the title, beating the Cowboys by 56.5 points. Part of that is due to placement and part due to bonus, where Iowa also outperformed.

Incredibly, all seven seeded wrestlers met or exceeded their seed. And the only ones of the seven who failed to exceed their seed had a pretty good reason. They were each the #1 seed. Even the unseeded wrestlers held up their end of the bargain as each met or exceeded their advancement point expectation.

#2 – 2025 Nebraska Cornhuskers

Nebraska entered the 2025 tournament hoping to make the podium. Based on their seeds the expectation was fourth place, just in front of a tough West Virginia squad, but trailing Oklahoma State and Iowa. With nine wrestlers qualified and four of them holding double digit seeds it was a tall task to overtake the Cowboys and Hawkeyes.

But the thing about double digit seeds is they leave a lot of room to the upside. And boy did the Huskers take advantage of that fact as all four far exceeded their expectations. Leading the way were Jacob Van Dee with a 10 spot improvement from #17 to #7 and Camden McDanel with a 12 spot improvement from #20 to #8. That was more than enough to offset their lone starter to underperform his seed.

On Any Other Given Saturday

#1 – 2024 North Carolina State

Woulda, coulda, shoulda. This is the team that got me thinking about this stuff in the first place. After using my expected points model to predict NC State would finish second (and unnecessarily getting at least one ACC fan over excited), they shocked my by finishing tied for eleventh. I asked at the time if this was the biggest under performance ever without really having a way to check.

It turns out my instinct was correct. This installment of the Wolfpack kinda packed it in. I don’t like to dwell on the negative at a personal level even if I enjoy extreme values of both kinds. So without naming names nine of the ten failed to meet their seed based expectations. Maybe they were just training through this one. On the plus side, in 2025 they far exceeded expectations. So, lessons learned.

#2 – 1984 Oklahoma State

It really should be 35 and counting. The Cowboys of 1984 entered the tournament as a fourteen point favorite over Iowa. They left 25.75 points adrift. Enough said.

The Data

For your viewing pleasure I include the:

• expected placement plus advancement points based on seeds,
• actual placement plus advancement points,
• difference between those two in absolute and percentage terms,
• placement plus advancement plus bonus points,
• difference between that and the placement plus advancement based on seeds in absolute and percentage terms.

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