OSU Wrestling: Second Batch of NCAA Coaches’ Rankings Released

All 10 of the Cowboy wrestling starters appeared in the top 20 at their respective weights in the second edition of this year’s the coaches’ rankings, and four Cowboys are in the top three.

These rankings are voted on by 16 coaches (two coaches from each of the eight conferences). Coaches can only consider a schools starter at a given weight and wrestlers must wrestle at least eight Division-I matches and one match in the past 30 days to be considered. Here’s how Oklahoma State stacked up:

125: No. 3 Troy Spratley
133: No. 16 Reece Witcraft
141: No. 6 Tagen Jamison
149: No. 17 Carter Young
157: No. 10 Caleb Fish
165: No. 6 Cameron Amine
174: No. 2 Dean Hamiti Jr.
184: No. 3 Dustin Plott
197: No. 6 Luke Surber
HWT: No. 3 Wyatt Hendrickson

Here are the full rankings.

The most eye-grabbing among those is probably Dean Hamiti Jr. coming in at No. 2 at 174 pounds. Hamiti is No. 3 in most rankings, behind Missouri’s Keegan O’Toole and Penn State’s Levi Haines. O’Toole is absent from these coaches rankings because he hasn’t wrestled in the allotted 30 days because of injury. The hope is O’Toole is back for the postseason, which means he and Hamiti could meet up in Tulsa at the Big 12 championships.

The NCAA also released an RPI for each weight, which featured Hamiti, Surber and Surber at the top of their weightclasses. The RPI is a calculation that consists of three factors: winning percentage, opponent winning percentage (strength of schedule) and opponent’s opponent winning percentage (opponent’s strength of schedule). Only matches against DI opponents at the designated weight class count toward the RPI and a wrestler has to have wrestled 15 matches to be ranked in the RPI. The full RPI rankings can be found here.

The Cowboys don’t take to the mat again until their meeting with Iowa on Feb. 23 in Carver-Hawkeye Arena. The Hawkeyes are 11-1 this season with the lone loss being to national power Penn State.