The Big Ten has released the brackets for this weekend's conference tournament and for the most part, IU has made out about as favorably as could be reasoonably expected.

With 11 man brackets*, five of the eight seeded wrestlers in a weight class randomly receive byes to the second round. The other three at each weight have a first round match against an unseeded opponent. There are advantages and disadvantages to a bye. On one hand, it is an automatic win. On the other hand, a a wrestler without a bye has a chance to rack up bonus points against an unseeded opponent.

IU has seeded wrestlers in six weight classes, and of those, redshirt freshman Justin Brooks at 125 pounds, senior Kurt Kinser at 149 pounds, senior Paul Young at 157 pounds and graduate student Ricky Alcala at heavyweight have byes.

Redshirt freshman Ryan LeBlanc, seeded seventh at 165 pounds, will wrestle Kyle Mosier of Purdue for the second match in a row. LeBlan won 7-3 in the first meeting.

Junior Matt Powless, seeded fourth at 197 pounds, gets Tyler Dickinson of Michigan State for the fourth time this season. He scored bonus points in the first two meetings, but won only by an 8-5 decision in their last meeting.

IU's four unseeded wrestlers are all considered underdogs in their opening round matches and have each lost to their opponents earlier this year, though seniors Nick Avery at 174 pounds and Eric Cameron at 184 pounds each lost by fairly narrow decisions the first time around.

For more information on the tournament, see my preview from today's IDS. I also broke down each of the weights in this blog yesterday. I plan to post updates throughout the weekend in this space, and a recap will be in Monday's IDS.

*Except for at 133 and 141 pounds, where Michigan State oddly did not enter wrestlers. I will try to get the scoop on this as soon as can.

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