Timely Information for Takedown Scoring and Stats Users
A Statistical Look at Victory Odds in High School Wrestling
A look at win probability given the match score confirms what we know. A few surprises.
Scoring the first takedown is crucial, significantly enhancing a wrestler's chance of victory.
Taking this to the next level, we explored the probability of winning given the score at any point in the match by analyzing 500,000 high school matches with a detailed statistical model. Here’s what we discovered.
Key Findings
Four-Point Lead Is Decisive: a four-point lead at any time results in a win 93% of the time.:
Period Timing Is Irrelevant: The lead's timing does not significantly alter the win chances. Whether you’re up by one point in the first or third period, the chances of winning are roughly equal.
Scoring Differential Matters: It's the difference in scores, not the absolute scores, that determines the win probability. A 1-0 match and 7-6 match have the same win probability. With one second left in the match, this is obvious. Not as much when mid-way through the second period and the feathers are flying.
College is Slightly Higher: at all scoring differentials, the victory probability is slightly higher for college matches.
Click or tap chart to enlarge.
The model is 86% accurate and while that’s commendable as statistical models go it isn’t perfect. Sometimes outcomes are unpredictable! Wrestling would be boring otherwise.
Revisit Tech Falls
At a scoring difference of 10 points, the model calculates a win probability of 99.9%. At 12 points or more, this large sample has no instance of the prevailing wrestler losing; that is, in every single instance where a wrestler is winning by 12 points or more, the wrestler with the lead won the match.
Might make sense to ratchet that down the technical fall threshold from 15 to 12 or even a 10 point advantage. This change would better reflect that realities of competition.
Why Do This Analysis?
While wrestling currently trails other sports in analytics, we are excited to make a meaningful contribution. Our ongoing efforts in this area aim to improve our products, educate the wrestling community, and elevate the sport's analytics profile.
We hope the folks who conjure up the rules and make changes are listening. With the right tools — like Takedown Scoring and Stats — wrestling can be a analytics rich sport and, perhaps, close the embarrassing data gap between wrestling and other sports that long ago embraced data analytics and statistics.
We will use this model in our products to improve the presentation of match results in Takedown LIVE and, perhaps, X (formerly Twitter). Stay tuned for those enhancements later this year.