If some of the faces at the NCAA Division I wrestling championships look familiar to members of the Penn State team, well, it's probably because they are.

Once again, the Big Ten will send 72 qualifiers to the national championships -- the most of any conference in the tournament.

And the conference sending the second-most qualifiers? The Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association will send 47 -- 25 fewer than the Big Ten.

While it may appear that the Big Ten is favored a little more than the rest of the NCAA Division I conferences, there is a reason the conference receives so many qualifying bids.

According to Penn State head coach Troy Sunderland, the NCAA takes into account the current rankings of teams and individuals in the conferences, the depth of teams and the overall quality of the teams. Added to that is a formula that calculates past performances, number of past All-Americans and NCAA champions.

Throw those elements together and you've got yourself the recipe for deciding which conferences get the most NCAA qualifying bids.

It should come as no surprise then, with the conference's history filled with national champions and All-Americans, why the Big Ten lands 72 qualifiers year-in and year-out.

One look at the latest rankings show 10 out of 11 Big Ten teams are ranked in the top 25. Couple that with the fact that 60 out of 200 nationally ranked wrestlers hail from Big Ten teams, and you can start to see why the conference manages to land so many qualifiers.

"Obviously there's good kids at the NCAA tournament," Sunderland said, "and in any particular weight class in the Big Ten you have a number of ranked guys. I'm thinking at 184 where you have the top four kids in the country in the Big Ten."

So what gives the Big Ten the edge that translates into more qualifiers? Well, according to two-time All-American Phil Davis, the Big Ten has a different style than the rest of the country.

"The Big Ten style is, you know, wrestle all the way to the edge and then some. Go all the way to the whistle and then some for the sake of just giving the extra push where they can," Davis said. "That's Big Ten wrestling. Not because they think wrestling past the whistle is going to make them win the match. [It's] just to say, 'I'm tougher.'

"That's Big Ten wrestling, and once you get to the national tournament, not everyone is going to wrestle that style. It gives us Big Ten guys a chance to beat up on a couple people."

If that's the case, the Big Ten will have the numbers advantage going into next week's tournament.

The Big Ten's 72 wrestlers give it a high probability of bringing home more titles and perpetuating the cycle of securing more national qualifiers in the process.

"There's tough individuals through all the conferences," senior national qualifier James Yonushonis said, "but if you make it through the Big Ten, there's more of a chance that you'll place at the national tournament."

Although there may be tough individuals in other conferences, they aren't as prevalent as in the Big Ten, where each dual meet is likely to see two or more ranked individuals competing over the course of the evening.

And with the depth that each Big Ten team has waiting in the wings, the conference doesn't look like it will be losing its stranglehold on those 72 qualifying spots anytime soon.