2016 Women’s NCAA Swimming Championships: Day 2 Up/Downs

For those unfamiliar with the terminology: “Up” means a swimmer who is in the A-final, as those swimmers cannot fall lower than 8th barring a DQ. “Down” will mean B-finalists, who are between 9th-16th place.

Note: Diving is expected to be completed by 3PM Eastern Time. We will update these up/downs then.

This year, we’re introducing a new angle on our traditional up/down rankings: and that’s the idea of “burned swims.” Basically, this will keep a tally of the number of swims that a team took (including scratches and DFS) to get to that number of up/downs. This is relevant because, for example, while Cal and Stanford didn’t have any finalists in the 500 free, they also only had one swimmer entered between the two of them.

This metric will help identify where teams are expecting surges in scoring and smooth-out the curves from particularly weak or strong events from a team. We’ll focus on tracking burned swims from the top 12 teams – on Thursday, that means the top 12 teams based on psych sheet scoring .

Below, we’ve split out projections and actual results for each event, then at the end is a summary with just the core that you need to know. Scroll all the way down for that summary.

200 Free Relay

The only real big shifts here was that USC took Ohio State’s spot in the top 8, but they were seeded 9th and 8th, respectively, so that’s not a big swap.

500 Free

The Georgia Bulldogs made a big move up in this 500 free, adding another scorer in B-Finalist Stephanie Peters. USC’s Chelsea Chenault, on the other hand, was seeded to finish in the A-Final but wound up out of the scoring altogether. In fact, the Pac-12 Conference’s highest finisher in this prelims was Bonnie Brandon in 29th.

200 IM

The Cal women lost one overall scorer in the 200 IM, but made up for it by putting three total into the A-Final. That’s a big lift on what was a challenging day for them overall.

50 Free

400 Medley Relay

The Georgia women got into the A-Final of one of their weaker relays, continuing a very good day for them. They and Texas replaced Cal and A&M, who will be at the top of the B-Final.

Summary

The Cal women have 4 swimmers in the A-Final tonight, which is the most of any team. However Georgia, even with 1 fewer swim, should emerge from the day with the lead thanks to 6 total finalists. The Stanford women didn’t do much individually, but this isn’t their big day of the meet. They held serve and were able to get some key swimmers (Lia Neal) rest thanks to their relay depth.

Sorted by Team Score

Sorted by Ups then Downs