Can you believe you get all this for free? Last night Blair Academy traveled west to rival Wyoming Seminary and the only thing better than my preview for it was the actual wrestling. And I expect the same thing to be true today as the Blue Knights host back to back national top 10 teams with New Jersey’s Delbarton coming into town. I seem to always mention this sort of thing whenever Blair or Sem or even Delbarton are in the mix for a big event. For the people who criticize “non-boundary” schools, and recruiting, look at this competition, look at the travel opportunities, look at the number of kids from all these schools heading to the Ivy League, why would you NOT want to send your kid to one of them if you had the chance? My high school had a pipeline to CSUN, these schools have pipelines to Cornell, Columbia, and Penn. Like what are we talking about. But this isn’t a prep and private school advertisement so I’ll get back to the wrestling. Which, as I mentioned, these schools tend to have schedules full of the toughest competition. And tonight’s dual is just one more in the middle of that. And I have the best preview for it yet again. And it’s freeeeeeeeeeee. Yet again.

So unlike Blair, Delbarton doesn’t compete directly against Wyoming Seminary under the same jurisdiction, and duals against them aren’t annual events. But this year, we get to see it twice. They were both in Oklahoma for the Hall of Fame Duals and ended up wrestling in the semifinals on day 2, after pool action on day 1. Obviously, that gives us a little insight into this match up, but we also saw the Sem line up last night against Blair and I’ll try to combine both of those pieces of information into a comprehensive final “projected” line up. Emphasis on projected because we never know until the name is called out who actually takes the mat. But we do what we can with what we got.

Starting with that first meeting in December, we have to mention that neither team used their full line ups. And again, they might not here either. But I’m proceeding with the maximum strength possible for each. In which case, Delbarton was without Jayden James and Sem was without Sealey and Bouzakis. And the final score with some shuffling all around was Sem 39 Delbarton 21. I think even keeping things relatively the same, Delbarton closes the gap a little. However, it’s more than likely not enough. Like an underdog football team kicking an onside kick or a fake punt turning momentum in their favor, there probably has to be a little shuffling of the Green Wave line up yet again. And I think I found a possible “path to victory” for them.

Keeping weights relatively “standard” to what Delbarton has looked like at major tournaments, we should expect 4 ranked matches and even more individually ranked wrestlers. We already saw Dan Jones against Desmond and Cerchio against Federici. Both of those went to Sem the first round. Cerchio was able to get a win over Federici in the most recent battle between them, but Jones hasn’t had that chance yet. Could he flip the result as well? Sure. But as we sit here typing this, I’d say it’s a long shot. The other two ranked matches we’ll be seeing for the first time, with Sealey and James expected to compete. I have them splitting those, but they’ll be tough as well. Sealey just battled with Pete Snyder last night up at 175. Maybe Parentin sees an opening. Botello just lost a close one to Dekraker. James has a win over him at Beast. The point is, they could go any which way.

However, with Sem favored in 8 of the 6, and favored in 5 of the 8 to get bonus points, there’s little opportunity – barring huge surprises (which are always possible) – to shock the wrestling world with the team win. There is however a possible reshuffling that I think does give the Green Wave a little sliver of hope. A glimmer. And sometimes that’s all you need.