Rules & scoring
Everything about how the pool works: what you pick, how points are awarded, how ties break, and what happens at the deadline.
Filling out your bracket
- One bracket, all 10 weight classes. You submit a single entry — not one per weight class. The tabs just move you between classes within the same entry.
- Up to 3 brackets per pool. Use “Add another bracket” on the pool page to enter more than one, either blank or copied from a bracket you've already filled out (in this pool or another). Each one is scored and ranked separately and shows up as “name (2)” in the standings.
- Picks save the moment you make them. There is no save button. Click a wrestler and it's stored; you can close the tab and come back.
- 320 picks in total — 32 per weight class, across 10 classes. Changing an earlier pick clears the later rounds that depended on it, since that wrestler is no longer there to advance.
- Auto-pick fills the gaps. The auto-pick buttons advance the better seed through every matchup you haven't decided yet, for one weight class or all of them. Picks you've already made are never overwritten.
- Submitting needs all 320 picks plus an Outstanding Wrestler pick. Until then the submit button stays disabled and tells you what's missing.
Scoring
You earn points for correctly predicting the winner of each match. The value doubles every round, so the later rounds are worth far more than the early ones.
| Match | Points each | Matches | Round total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prelim | 0.5 | 1 | 0.5 |
| Round of 32 | 0.5 | 16 | 8 |
| Round of 16 | 1 | 8 | 8 |
| Quarterfinals | 2 | 4 | 8 |
| Semifinals | 4 | 2 | 8 |
| Championship | 8 | 1 | 8 |
| Per weight class | 32 | 40.5 |
Every round after the prelim is worth the same 8 points in total, so nailing one championship is worth as much as the entire round of 32. A perfect bracket across all 10 weight classes is 405 points.
Points are awarded as official results are entered, so standings update live during the tournament. A pick scores nothing until its match has been decided — an unscored pick isn't a wrong one.
Tiebreaker
Every bracket also picks the tournament's Outstanding Wrestler. It is worth no points on its own — it only breaks ties, so two people on the same score are separated by who got the award right.
The award almost always goes to a wrestler who won their weight class, which is why the picker leads with your own champion picks. You can still choose anyone in the field if you want to.
The deadline
Picks lock at the tournament's start time. After that nothing can be changed — picks, the tiebreaker, or your submission.
If your bracket isn't finished when it locks, it gets completed for you — the better seed is advanced through every matchup you left blank, and the bracket is entered as-is. You compete either way instead of scoring zero, but you get whatever the seeds give you, so it's worth making your own picks.
How the bracket is built
Each weight class has 33 wrestlers seeded 1–33, matching the official NCAA bracket. Seeds 32 and 33 meet in a single prelim match, and the winner takes the open spot opposite the 1 seed. From there it's a standard 32-wrestler single-elimination bracket.
This pool scores the championship bracket only — consolation rounds and placement matches don't count.