A wrestlers performance can be very dependent upon how they manage their weight. If they are struggling to make weight for each match then, usually they are having to cut too much weight to make weight. When that happens they generally won't have as much energy or as long of a gas tank. These are the wrestlers that you generally see fade in the 3rd.

Tournaments really help with this management because some of these larger tournaments have multiple weigh-in's. This forces the wrestlers to have to understand how to manage their weight on consecutive days. It also better prepares wrestlers for NCAA's, which if you plan on making a run in the big tourney you will have to weigh-in 3 consecutive days. If you are having a hard time making weight and your management is bad this can be brutal and really cause issues with your performance. This is why I think Joey Dance never did as well as he should have at NCAA's.

With all of that said duals can also help with weight management. This is why you see some coaches schedule duals on back-to-back days. As this also helps coach up the wrestlers on how they are or aren't managing their weight properly. Every coach attacks it different, but in the end there aren't enough quality tournaments for us to enter into to allow us to just do 5 duals and then just tourneys. Our guys weight management would probably suffer from not having to do routine weigh-in's.

There is a plus side to a light schedule. Dresser in the past and even Robie now are believers in a lighter schedule around the middle of the season. That is because that gives the wrestlers and coaches time to identify areas that need improvement during the early season. They can then have a 2 week break as we did in January and not have to worry about weight management as much. That allows them to really go full bore and focus on wrestling. Which can be tough to do if you are too busy doing cardio or at low energy due to cutting.

Sorry that got a bit longer than I planned... just wanted to provide more information some of the reasoning for duals vs. tourney scheduling.