Five wrestlers from App State have top-33 national rankings within their weight classes in the Division I Coaches Rankings that were released Thursday.

* Caleb Smith, No. 13 at 125 pounds
* Ethan Oakley, No. 24 at 133 pounds
* Jon Jon Millner, No. 9 at 149 pounds
* Tommy Askey, No. 26 at 157 pounds
* Will Formato, No. 26 at 165 pounds

The rankings are relevant when determining at-large berths within the 33-wrestler brackets for each weight class at the NCAA Championships, which will be held March 16-18 in Tulsa, Okla.

Each champion in the 10 weight classes at the SoCon Championships on March 4 in Boone will qualify automatically for the NCAAs. According to the NCAA pre-allocations announced Thursday, only the SoCon’s second-place finishers at 133 pounds and 174 pounds have also been pre-allocated to qualify automatically.

The SoCon has three ranked wrestlers at 133 pounds, including App State’s Ethan Oakley after his unbeaten run in SoCon duals, but at least one of those three wrestlers won’t earn an automatic berth during the SoCon Championships and will have to hope for an at-large berth.

At 174 pounds, App State’s Will Miller isn’t included in this set of NCAA Coaches’ Rankings despite possessing a top-25 RPI and having been ranked by coaches earlier in a 22-9 regular season that included a 7-1 record in SoCon duals. He had the second-best SoCon record behind Chattanooga’s Rocky Jordan, who is ranked No. 12 at 174, and that weight class will get two automatic berths.

At 165 pounds, the SoCon has two wrestlers in the top 33 of the Coaches’ Rankings in App State’s Will Formato and Gardner-Webb’s RJ Mosley, a pair of multi-time NCAA qualifiers who have had several close head-to-head matchups. Only the SoCon champion at 165 will earn an automatic berth, with at least one of them hoping for one of the five at-large berths available at 165.

The league pre-allocations were determined by using a sliding scale of the three standards while never going below the base of .700 winning percentage, top 30 coaches’ ranking and top 30 RPI ranking until reaching the maximum of 29 wrestlers per weight class. For each wrestler that reached the threshold in at least two of the three categories, his conference tournament was awarded a qualifying spot in that weight class.
App State wrestlers with RPI rankings are Smith (No. 14), Millner (No. 14), Askey (No. 23), Formato (No. 24) and Miller (No. 25).

The SoCon went from four pre-allocations for second-place tournament finishers in 2021 to three pre-allocations in 2022 and now only two pre-allocations in 2023. The number of at-large spots available nationwide has gone from 47 in 2021 to 64 in 2022 and now just 46 in 2023.

There are seven Division I wrestling leagues, and the Big Ten, for instance, will get 10 automatic qualifiers in one weight class (157) and nine automatic qualifiers in seven other weight classes.

SOCON PRE-ALLOCATION OUTLOOK

Weight Class   Automatic allotments out of 33 spots nationally      Automatic SoCon allotments      SoCon wrestlers ranked in top 33
125                                                     29 of 33 (4 at-large)                                               1                                                             2
133                                                     28 of 33 (5 at-large)                                               2                                                             3
141                                                     29 of 33 (4 at-large)                                                1                                                             2
149                                                    29 of 33 (4 at-large)                                                 1                                                             1
157                                                    29 of 33 (4 at-large)                                                  1                                                             1
165                                                    28 of 33 (5 at-large)                                                 1                                                              2­
174                                                     28 of 33 (5 at-large)                                                2                                                               1
184                                                    26 of 33 (7 at-large)                                                 1                                                               3
197                                                     29 of 33 (4 at-large)                                                1                                                               1
285                                                     29 of 33 (4 at-large)                                               1                                                                1

NATIONAL PRE-ALLOCATION OUTLOOK

BY CONFERENCE                         125   133   141   149   157   165   174   184   197   285   TOTAL
Atlantic Coast Conference           2        3      4       4       3       3       3       5       4       3         34
Big 12 Conference                          6       5      7       7       7       8       6      4       6       8         64
Big Ten Conference                       9        9     9       9      10      8       7      9       9       9         88
EIWA                                                6        5      5       2       3       5       4      4       5       6          45
Mid-American Conference          2         1      2       5       4       1        4      2       1        1          23
Pacific-12 Conference                   3         3      1       1        1       2        2      1       3        1          18
Southern Conference                    1         2       1       1       1       1        2       1       1        1          12
Pre-Allocations                              29       28    29    29     29    28     28    26      29     29       284
At-Large                                           4         5      4       4      4       5        5      7        4       4         46

After all the conference tournaments have concluded, the NCAA Division I Wrestling Committee will meet in-person to select the remaining 46 at-large qualifiers, which will be announced on March 7. Brackets and seeding will be announced on NCAA.com at 8 p.m. on March 8.

The coaches’ rankings are determined by a vote of 14 coaches in each weight class with two head coaches from each of the seven conferences. For ranking purposes, coaches may only consider a wrestler that has been designated as a starter at a respective weight class. Wrestlers must have eight Division I matches in the weight class to be considered with at least one within the last 30 days.

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 Division I opponents at the designated weight class count towards the RPI and a wrestler needs to have wrestled 15 matches to be ranked.

The coaches’ ranking and RPI are two of several criteria that will be evaluated during the at-large selection and seeding process along with head-to-head competition, quality wins, conference tournament placement, results versus common opponents and win percentage.