When: 7PM EASTERN; Friday January 20, 2023

Where: Blair Academy; Mat Scouts Rokfin channel

And here we go. The top prep school rivalry in the country, the top 2 teams in the country. More nationally ranked match ups than I can count – musings of a middle school dropout. That’s a story for another day. The story on this day is the best HS wrestling of the season. At least as far as a single dual is concerned. And I think we’re in for a classic.

Now, I want to emphasize (I feel like I need to always emphasize) that dual line ups are subject to change. I can only go by the information I’m given – which in this case was none – and the information that is out there and give a best guess as to what we’ll see. I also try to line up main event or headliner type matches, if those are possible at a weight. And then I like to look at particular strategies and see if there’s a way a team can “steal” a weight or mitigate the team points they give up.

With that being said, most recently almost all of the Blair wrestlers have dropped down a weight. DeLuca at 113, Marc-Anthony at 120, and so on. And I started putting this together keeping that in mind. However, if you do that all the way up to 285, they have a hole somewhere. In this case it was 215.

So the question really is, in a dual, where does Blair feel they have the solid enough wrestler to fill in the hole left by the downward movement. I believe it is at 113 with Ryan Meier. Meaning he should still be in this lineup tonight. So then the question is, for a dual do they just keep the lineup they’ve been going with, or do they get creative between DeLuca and Meier?

(note: the Mat Scouts preview of this does have DeLuca at 113 and Meier at 120. My feeling is they get better information than I do, so perhaps that is the way this goes. So we’ll look at that for the team score implications).

(second note: I would love to see a Marc-Anthony McGowan vs Luke Lilledahl match up but there’s really no reason to do it other than just to do it).

Ok, so like I say, we’re playing a little guessing game here but I like games and I’m a decent guesser. 

If the lineups are true to where they’ve competed most of the season, Blair would be the favorite in 7. Sem would be the favorite in 5. And there would be 2 coin flip type tossups. The issue – if you want to call it that – for Sem is that Blair is a bigger favorite in those 7 than they are in their 5. This means it’s more likely for Blair to get one of these from them than the other way around. 

For the outcome to go Sem’s way, they will need to protect all the matches they come in expected to win, win the coinflips, and either “steal” a weight or match any Blair bonus. It’s not impossible by any means, but does remind me of say the Packers playoff chances with 3 weeks left. A lot of dominoes had to fall in place. The Packers almost made it happen. The Blue Knights could as well.

So, I do have the match up stats of the lineups I’m focusing on but let’s look at this alternate Blair lineup where DeLuca and Meier flip and the rest stay the same.

In this scenario, DeLuca becomes a big favorite at 113. I have Filipos winning that now (but this is one of those coinflips so Blair could win this with Meier anyway). But for our consideration at the moment, DeLuca flips this weight for Blair. This puts Meier down at 120 against Lilledahl, which makes WS a bigger favorite and very likely to get bonus.

Still, in the end, it could end up being the difference between an 8-6 match advantage for Blair vs 7-7. So where my hypothetical below has Blair winning in extra dramatic fashion at 285, they might have it secured before then. 

However, what if they keep Meier at 113 and he wins and then DeLuca wins 120? By flipping 113/120 they are conceding to Lilledahl. DeLuca on the other hand could pull it off.

But, ultimately, it might make strategic sense for Blair to flip DeLuca and Meier. They probably do it. But if we can’t get McGowan and Lilledahl, I hope for selfish reasons we get to see LeDuca and Lilledahl run it back.

Maybe some other time.

In the end, who really knows how these coaches end up moving guys around and all of what I typed and put together will be worth the paper it was written on. Still fun to hash out and see just what a quality competition we have in store.