Men’s Recruiting Ranks In-Progress Analysis: All Classes Through 2019 NCAAs

It’s a week of NCAA retrospectives: we’ve looked back at how the graduating senior class did over four NCAA seasons, comparing the data to our rank of the class as high school recruits in 2014. We’ve also taken a look back at team-by-team recruiting classes and our 2015 ranks. And we looked at the current crop of NCAA freshman and the early returns compared to our recruiting rank and re-rank from the past two years.

Since we’ve got the data compiled, we thought it was worth sharing a quick in-progress look at the remaining two classes and how they’ve scored individually over their NCAA careers.

Further reading:

• Revisiting recruiting ranks: High school class of 2015
• Revisiting recruiting ranks: High school class of 2018
• Re-Ranking the recruiting classes: Collegiate class of 2016-2019

We’ll also include this year’s freshmen and seniors to have all the data in one post. You can find further analysis of those classes above.

Notes:

• The data included is only individual scoring at NCAAs. That’s not an exact measure of an athlete’s contribution to a program: many of these swimmers (and others not listed) were relay scorers at NCAAs, scored significant points at conference meets and provided great leadership and culture-building for their programs. This data isn’t a perfect analysis of the best recruits – it’s merely a quick look at the data we can compile.
• Some of these athletes haven’t had as many scoring seasons as others in their class. Some redshirted a season and have more remaining seasons. Some deferred their enrollment as freshmen. Some sat out a year with a transfer. Some turned pro early. Some will turn pro early. Some are hard to pigeonhole into a specific class, international athletes especially. We did our best to group athletes where they best fit. Again, this isn’t a hard-and-fast ranking of value – it’s just the best data we can compile.
• The ranks are from our recruit rankings, typically compiled when these athletes were high school juniors. We don’t include internationals in those rankings, as it’s difficult to figure out if and when internationals will join the NCAA and which class they should be grouped with before they appear in the NCAA. Do bear in mind that our rankings were done well over a year before any of these athletes appeared in NCAA competition, so if you do have a quibble with a specific rank, you may want to check how fast that athlete actually was when the ranking was done before you get too livid. Unranked recruits showing massive improvement curves are some of the best stories in the NCAA year-in and year-out, and one reason we rank recruits is so we can better see which athletes had great rises during their college careers.
• All that said, compiling these ranks is a lot of data entry and a lot of research. If we missed anyone, or mis-classified anyone with the wrong class or with the wrong domestic/international tag, please let us know in the comments and we’ll update our data as soon as possible!

Seniors (High School Class of 2015, College Class of 2019)

Ranked Recruits

Unranked Recruits

International Recruits

Juniors (High School Class of 2016, College Class of 2020)

Ranked Recruits

Unranked Recruits

International Recruits

Quick Analysis: This hasn’t been a great class so far, with a lot of our ranked recruits still without even an individual NCAA invite. The two big unranked risers have been Dean Farris (1:38.7 in the 200 free and 48.6 in backstroke when we ranked) and Coleman Stewart (48.2/1:47 in back and 48.5 in fly when we ranked). But the strength of the class has been internationals, four of whom have scored more point than our best ranked domestic recruit.

Interestingly, this should’ve been a great class for Cal with 5 of the top 20 recruits. But two don’t even appear on the roster anymore. They’ve made up for it with internationals Pawel Sendyk and Zheng Quah, though. Texas, meanwhile, has had no swimming scorers in this class through three years after getting none of the top 20 recruits in this class.

Sophomores (High School Class of 2017, College Class of 2021)

Ranked Recruits

Unranked Recruits

International Recruits

Quick Analysis: in contrast, this has been an awesome domestic class through two years. #1-ranked Ryan Hoffer has outscored everyone by more than 12, and almost all of our top 20 have either scored individually or on a relay at NCAAs in their first two years. There aren’t too many unranked standouts yet, though a few of them seem to be improving rapidly. It hasn’t been a huge class of internationals, especially with Brandonn Almeida returning to Brazil.

Cal’s 5 top-20 ranked recruits have already combined for 265.5 individual – that’s more than most senior classes had scored in four years, based on our analysis of the senior classes. Only the outgoing seniors from Texas (430), Cal (300) and Indiana (278) scored more over four years than the current Cal sophomores have over two.

Freshmen (High School Class of 2018, College Class of 2022)

Ranked Recruits

Unranked Recruits

International Recruits

More recruiting rank analysis:

Women’s:

• Revisiting recruiting ranks: High school class of 2015
• Re-Ranking the recruiting classes: Collegiate class of 2016-2019
• Revisiting recruiting ranks: High school class of 2018
• All recruits, Classes of 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 (coming soon)

Men’s:

• Revisiting recruiting ranks: High school class of 2015 (coming soon)
• Re-Ranking the recruiting classes: Collegiate class of 2016-2019 (coming soon)
• Revisiting recruiting ranks: High school class of 2018 (coming soon)